Worst league start for a Chelsea manager in 9 years - Mauricio Pochettino continues to struggle

Chelsea's struggles in the Premier League this season continue to rumble on, as the London club find themselves in twelfth place following a 2-0 defeat to Everton. Goals from Abdoulaye Doucoure and Lewis Dobbin were enough for the Merseyside club to claim all three points against a Chelsea side that could only muster four shots on target across the entire game. The result now means that the Stamford Bridge side have won just two of their last eight league games and continue to look complete lost under the new manager. 

How bad has Mauricio Pochettino’s start been at Chelsea?

Indeed, from their 16 league games to date under Mauricio Pochettino, Chelsea have scored just 26 goals, conceded 26 goals, won just five games and picked up just 19 points. That's three points off last season's troubling start, which ultimately led to Graham Potter losing his job towards the end of the season. And when we look back across the last 10 Premier League campaigns we can see that just one offered up fewer points than what this current team and their manager have produced to date. As such, there are growing voices of discontent among the Chelsea support as to whether the Argentine tactician is really getting the best out of this squad. 

When we open things out to Chelsea's form over all competitions, things look a little better for the under-pressure manager. Three wins from three in the League Cup mean that Pochettino's record at the club currently stands at 1.47 points per game. That, crucially, is slightly higher than Potter's average of 1.42. But, as we can see in the graph below, it falls well short of what Chelsea fans are typically used to, as predecessors like Thomas Tuchel (2.08), Maurizio Sarri (2.08), Antonio Conte (2.12) and even Frank Lampard (1.75) achieved better results in the job. 

Why haven’t Chelsea performed well under Mauricio Pochettino?

While his record certainly looks poor compared to the managers that have come before him, Pochettino would certainly argue that he finds himself in a very different situaiton to the one Tuchel, Conte & Co. were in just a few years ago. And that's largely due to the club's unprecedented turnover in players in the last few years, with no less than 12 new players joining the club in the summer transfer window and 23 either leaving on permanent deals or on loan. Not to mention the 16 players that joined the club and 17 that were either sold or loaned out last season too. 

On top of that, the vast majority of players that Chelsea have signed are either extremely young or extremely inexperienced in the Premier League. So far this season his squad’s average age stands at 23.7, which is the youngest in the entire Premier League with only Burnley managing to field a starting XI with a lower younger age than what Chelsea routinely play. As such, Pochettino finds himself not only having to make sense of the huge squad at his disposal but in most cases also has to nurture and develop the young talents, despite the obvious calls for immediate success from fans of the club. Whether the 51-year-old tactician will be given the time to develop his players and build a squad capable of long-term success remains to be seen, but so far it hasn't worked terribly well.