Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly boosted Mauricio Pochettino’s chances of being kept on as manager next season as he praised the “beautiful” football being played by the team.
Speaking at a Sportico event in Los Angeles, Boehly – whose Clearlake Capital consortium purchased the club from former owner Roman Abramovich in May 2022 – said the “commentary has changed” surrounding the team in recent weeks, following a tumultuous first two years of his leadership.
The Blues have enjoyed an upturn in fortunes since they were hammered 5-0 by Premier League leaders Arsenal at the end of April, recovering to take seven points from their next three matches to give themselves a chance of European qualification.
Reports had suggested that returning the club to Europe is the minimum expectation if Pochettino is to see the second season of his two-year contract.
But after a creditable draw with Champions League-chasing Aston Villa and excellent home wins against London rivals Tottenham and West Ham – the second of which was a 5-0 procession – Boehly indicated his satisfaction that they are at last living up to the expectations set by a more than £1billion transfer spend.
“We’ve seen, over the last two and a half games at least – the second half of Aston Villa, Tottenham and West Ham – where we played just beautiful football,” he said. “It was so fluid. It was exactly the way we drew it up.
“The number of shots we had on goal in those two and a half games, you could really start to see what we were working on coming together. Our goal is obviously to win.
“And the commentary has changed over the last two and a half games. I’ve never seen anything change so quickly than prospective on how a team does.”
Chelsea play Nottingham Forest at the City Ground on Saturday looking to leapfrog Newcastle into sixth, the last spot that is guaranteed a place in Europe next season, before travelling to Brighton next week and finishing up at home to Bournemouth.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here