In the Abramovic days Chelsea could win a fourth-round FA Cup tie, as Messrs Scolari and Lampard would tell you, and the manager would be sacked shortly after, watching his successor carry on the run with his players and take the team to Wembley. They are not so ruthless now but there is a reason the vultures are perched on the roof of the Trinity Road Stand at Villa Park tonight and that’s to be there should Chelsea lose heavily or the players betray any lack of faith in their manager, rather than just a wife’s disdain, or the travelling supporters, usually at the vanguard of a revolution, turn on Mauricio Pochettino again.
He’s hardly the cause of Chelsea’s woes, though, but may pay the price of a reckless new ownership’s berserk buying spree during which, in classic Harry Enfield ‘I’ve seen you coming’ style they have paid over the odds on fees and wages and lumbered the club with seven to eight-year commitments, too. Pochettino might be struggling to make some sense of his squad but almost anyone would with an absurd number of first-team squad players, a ridiculous number of which are tied to such long contracts.
Add to that an injury epidemic and his hands are not just tied, his feet are, too. Some fans might want Jose Mourinho but there’s not a chance in hell that the board would appoint him. His recent record isn’t good enough and he will not be shy of apportioning blame when it goes pear-shaped. The owners, shielded by their two most recent appointments, Graham Potter and Pochettino, would not risk that.
That’s not to say Pochettino has not made errors in selection and tactics. They are a team that’s comfortably less than the sum of their parts which is not something you could say about Aston Villa under Unai Emery. The defeat by Newcastle apart, Villa are buoyant and play with a coherent strategy no matter the personnel changes week-to-week. They are overwhelming favourites tonight and Emery has two wins and a draw in the three games his side have played against Chelsea since he succeeded Steven Gerrard. Boubacar Kamara and Douglas Luiz have forged a fantastic partnership that must be the envy of Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez and demonstrates what astute recruitment, an air of calm and common purpose, and fine coaching can achieve.
Much at stake, then, Not least the prize, priceless in this author’s opinion, the visit of Leeds United on Feb 28.