What Pochettino did at full time has many Chelsea fans worried despite his excuse | OneFootball

At full time of Chelsea’s win over Bournemouth today there was a great buzz in Stamford Bridge.

The victory had secured European football, the sun was shining, and after a tough season the fans wanted to show some love and appreciation to the players and staff. Thiago Silva’s farewell speech was also a touching moment.

But there was something that many fans noticed that soured things a little. As the majority of players and their families did their lap of appreciation around the pitch to show love to the supporters and get some back in return, Mauricio Pochettino and his staff disappeared down the tunnel sharpish, without taking part if any of it.

Asked about this in his press conference afterwards, he insisted that it was just because Adrian the press officer had summoned him:

“When the players started [their lap], Adrian said I need to go inside.”

Mauricio Pochettino goes down the tunnel after the last game of the season.

A very suspect message

Now everything that Pochettino has said and done recently has indicated that he’s happy to stay – including his words in the press conference after the game. But there’s no doubt this is not a great look given things have been very tense in the last few weeks, and given the manager has admitted openly he doesn’t yet know if he’s staying.

Sure, maybe he was being summoned for press duties. But that doesn’t mean all his coaches needed to come with him. In fact, if you’re the press officer, you should know that the priority in terms of PR is surely to let the manager at least do a quick lap of appreciation to please the fans, even if that means being a little late for the  media.

Even the journalists would surely understand that.

We hope people are just reading into this too much. The last thing we need is the disruption of another manager being fired just as this group starts to make some progress in gelling together.