Chelsea owner who never wanted Pochettino came “armed with data” to prove 2 failings of the coach | OneFootball

Ben Jacobs is as well connected as they come at Chelsea, and we were expecting some really juicy information from him on the events at Chelsea tonight.

Mauricio Pochettino has been sacked, and information about the surprising move is coming from all over. Jacob’s angle focuses on how the ownership side came to this decision.

It was already previously reported that Behdad Eghbali, one of the “co-controlling owners” was not a fan of the Pochettino appointment in the first place. Reports were that he was “never fully convinced” by the decision to bring the former Spurs boss in.

Given that, he was never going to go easy on Pochettino, and it sounds like he led the charge on the club side to part ways. Jacobs reports that “especially” Eghbali “came armed with data” to the end of season meetings with Pochettino. A lot of the data this season was good and pointed towards the improvement we finally saw in the last two months, but they apparently focused on the team’s struggles with missing big chances, and at set pieces.

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Both of those seem a little harsh, given the context. Pochettino was given basically one striker to work with, and he was as raw as they come. Nicolas Jackson missed a lot of chances, but he was improving as time went by.

On set pieces, while we would expect more from the team, there was also clearly a squad building issue. The players that Pochettino was expected to play every week included a lot of small players, or those simply not good in the air.

Certainly we would think the coach wouldn’t have taken kindly to those two failings being put squarely at his door rather than at the door of the sporting directors who built the team.