Mauricio Pochettino has same Chelsea issue as Thomas Tuchel despite Wrexham win

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Mauricio Pochettino saw his Chelsea side swat away League Two Wrexham in his first game in charge of the Blues in a friendly on Wednesday evening. But the Argentine has a familiar issue to resolve ahead of the forthcoming Premier League season.

The West London club ran out comfortable 5-0 winners against the Red Dragons after promising young full-back Ian Maatsen gave them a 2-0 half-time lead before Conor Gallagher, Christopher Nkunku and Ben Chilwell all found the net after the break to complete the rout.

Pochettino fielded a mix of first-team stars and academy players for the pre-season friendly match in North Carolina, but after the match, the 51-year-old admitted that despite his satisfaction with the result and performance there were simply too many players at the club to manage.

Speaking to reporters in his post-match press conference, Pochettino said: “Like always a pre-season game, happy because of the attitude. Of course, it is time to improve. I think it is part of the process in this period to learn in the way we want to play and of course, build the physical condition also. I am happy with the performance.

“There are too many players. We need to assess and analyse and see what happens with them in the season. Many decisions that we need to take.

“But it is good to have the opportunity to see all these young guys who can show their quality. It is important for them and for us to have a real assessment. For sure all have quality, they need time and space to show they can compete for a place in the squad.”

Chelsea’s next pre-season outing is against Brighton on Sunday when the Blues boss will have another opportunity to shuffle his pack and try and establish just which players will make the cut as he attempts to reverse the club’s diminishing fortunes.

The origins of the bloated squad can be traced back to last summer when new owner Todd Boehly sanctioned the purchase of nine new players. Then manager Thomas Tuchel explained just how big an issue it was at the time.

Speaking 12 months ago, Tuchel said: “After the [pre-season] Arsenal game we wrote [all] the names down on the sheet because Sunday was the match against Arsenal and [on] Monday the group of players from England, Italy and Brazil came back.

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“So we wrote the names down to acknowledge that we would have 42 players in the building and it’s simply not possible.”

With Chelsea struggling in the Premier League, Tuchel was sacked and replaced by Graham Potter. But when another eight signings were made during the January transfer window, the squad size issue got even more unmanageable.

According to talkSPORT, in team meetings, some players were forced to sit on the floor and training games had to be split into 11 v 11 on one pitch and nine vs nine on another, just to ensure that the whole squad was able to play.

And so Pochettino will know full well he has more work to do to cut down the squad to avoid the problem of having too many players which hampered both Tuchel and Potter before him at the Bridge.

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