FORMER Chelsea star Emmanuel Petit has lashed out at Mauricio Pochettino, claiming the current boss “doesn’t have a clue.”
Ex-Tottenham manager Poch joined Chelsea last summer and was tasked with bringing Champions League football back to Stamford Bridge.
Big fees were spent on players including Moises Caicedo, Axel Disasi and Nicolas Jackson.
But after 23 league games, Chelsea find themselves 11th in the table with just nine wins.
The Blues were booed off the pitch on Sunday as they suffered a 4-2 home hammering to Wolves.
That followed a 4-1 thrashing by Liverpool at Anfield last week.
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And the pressure is now on Pochettino ahead of tonight’s FA Cup fourth round replay at Aston Villa.
Chelsea’s season could end up resting on this month’s Carabao Cup final against Liverpool.
But Petit is not holding much hope for the contest as he reckons Pochettino is out of his depth.
The French World Cup winner played 76 games for Chelsea between 2001 and 2004.
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And he feels Pochettino is struggling to fit his tactics around the players given to him by Todd Boehly.
As a result, Petit “feels sorry” for fans who are seeing Chelsea become a shadow of their former self.
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Petit told compare.bet: “I was so disappointed with Chelsea’s performance against Wolves. They looked so disorganised, were tactically a mess, no fighting spirit, communication, or character. I felt pity on the Chelsea fans.
“I was thinking, why would you put Nkunku up front as a lone striker? Does he even know what Nkunku does best?
“In Germany and France it is well known that he cannot play by himself up front and never has done that. He is very good in the 10 or in a two up front, but he can’t do that role at all.
“Pochettino refuses to mould his tactic around his players and the composition of the team just doesn’t make sense at the moment.
“He doesn’t have a clue what he wants to do, and his body language is not good at all, he looks like he is on the way out already.”
Interestingly, Petit has backed a return to Stamford Bridge for Jose Mourinho.
Adding he would like to see John Terry as assistant, Petit added: “I’ve seen the speculation that Mourinho could come in with John Terry as his assistant.
“When you think about it, it could be something interesting. He would give the team character and personality.
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“At the moment they are a broken team and he could be the man to come in and fix it. I actually think they need a manager who will have a proper vision of what needs to be done with the players that are there.
“They have to stop buying players and looking at how they can develop what they have there already. Chelsea need to develop an identity, because at the moment they don’t have one.”
Source: Soccer - thesun.co.uk
