Chelsea have been handed a huge incentive to stick with Mauricio Pochettino beyond the current season despite calls for the Argentine to be sacked.
The Blues boss has been under pressure for the majority of his first season at Stamford Bridge. A list of inconsistent results has left Chelsea ninth in the table, three points off Newcastle in the European places.
Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final defeat to Manchester City meant any hopes of silverware vanished before they were on the receiving end of a 5-0 thrashing by London rivals Arsenal on Tuesday night. The defeat at the Emirates Stadium has left Pochettino fighting to prove his worth once more.
Performances have been the main problem for Pochettino after Todd Boehly spent billions in the transfer market. However, the jaw-dropping injury issues at Cobham have stopped the Chelsea boss from selecting a strong XI in the majority of their fixtures.
Reece James, Ben Chilwell, Christopher Nkunku, Romeo Lavia and Wesley Fofana have all missed large portions of the season due to injuries. At the time of writing, Lesley Ugochukwu, Levi Colwill and Malo Gusto are out with injuries too leaving Pochettino without nearly a full XI.
Injury analyst Ben Dinnery has claimed that having stability at the club long-term will help ease the injury burden on the players going forward. “The quick answer [to Chelsea’s injury problems] is that there’s no magic bullet,” he told football.london, on behalf of Crypto Casino.
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“There are multiple influences and factors on what, how, where and when. One of the most obvious considerations is stability within the club. Chelsea have always been a club with an excellent injury record going back to Guus Hiddink and Jose Mourinho, they were always there or there about having one of the best injury records.
“What the research will show is that changes within the backroom staff will have a serious impact on that injury burden. We started to see a rise in the number of incidents from Thomas Tuchel and then on to Graham Potter. In the space of five-to-six months, the incident levels almost doubled. Then under Frank Lampard, they continued to rise.
“The research will say that if you bring a head coach, it may have some impact because of new training regimes and tactics, but when you’re bringing in additional members of staff then you’ll see a distinct impact. One research paper indicates when we look at hamstring injuries, that burden can almost triple in terms of the changing of head coach and backroom staff.
“I think having that stability moving forward, providing they keep Pochettino, will lower that injury burden. You obviously have players coming into a league for the first time and they’re young. What the data will tell us is it’s incomparable in terms to the demands of the game and the intensity.
“A lot of people will talk about distance covered, that hasn’t really changed a great deal, but what has changed is the intensity of the game and the time to recover from those distances. You’re having a lot of players who are adapting. You’re almost creating that perfect storm in terms of having an environment that isn’t ideal and having a squad, regardless of how big it is.
“Managers are forced to take risks and make decisions. Factor all of that, the two biggest red flags are fatigue and previous injuries – one of the best indicators for future history. If you’re talking about a squad carrying lots of injuries, that’s going to stretch any squad and players will then be required to play through in certain situations when they’d normally be taken out the firing line.
“A prime example (previous injuries) is Ben Chilwell. We’re talking about a player who’s coming on the back of a fairly significant knee problem and that keeps on happening. Reece James, another example.
“I did a study at the beginning of the season, James was a one in two player in the PL in terms of his availability. That figure has dropped even further – that was based on the last four seasons.
“To go into a campaign and expect James to play 60%-90% of PL games would have been hard because he hasn’t been anywhere near those levels in the past four years. With no European football, there should have been an opportunity for Pochettino to bed great ideas, build his team and cohesion to move forward with an eye on 2024/25 but because of those problems, he hasn’t been able to do so.”
