OLIVER HOLT: Warning! Managing Chelsea can seriously damage your health… Graham Potter and Frank Lampard were belittled and ridiculed and now it’s Mauricio Pochettino’s turn to suffer

• Chelsea endured a dismal 1-0 loss to Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge on Sunday
• Mauricio Pochettino is the latest manager to struggle under Chelsea’s owners
• Mail Sport’s new WhatsApp Channel: Get the breaking news and exclusives here 

Sunday was a good day for the reputations of Graham Potter and Frank Lampard. Most Sundays have been like that this season. Most Saturdays, too, come to think of it.

Both men were belittled, to a greater or lesser extent, when they were placed in charge of the madhouse formerly known as a successful football club called Chelsea. Both men were traduced.

Potter was called weak and naïve and out of his depth and not the right kind of character to lead a big club. Lampard was ridiculed, too. Those who had already decided he was an ineffectual coach crowed that their suspicions had been confirmed.

Well maybe Potter was out of his depth. Maybe Lampard was, too. Because with every week that passes, the Chelsea of Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali looks more and more like a bottomless pit of incompetence.

Now, it is Mauricio Pochettino’s turn to suffer. Chelsea’s home defeat to Aston Villa at the weekend meant that the Argentinian boss has led them to their worst start to a season since 1978 but only a fool would blame him for the unholy mess he has inherited at Stamford Bridge.

Mauricio Pochettino’s disappointing start to the Premier League season went from bad to worse on Sunday afternoon as Chelsea were beaten 1-0 by Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge

Frank Lampard (L) and Graham Potter (R) both endured turbulent spells in charge of Chelsea

Chelsea’s form has plummeted since Todd Boehly’s arrival at the club in the summer of 2022

The chaos of mediocrity at Chelsea is not down to Pochettino, just as it was not down to Potter or Lampard. This is not about the manager. This is about the hubris of a new ownership team who thought they were the smartest men in the room and have found out the hard way that, in football terms at least, they are just Dumb and Dumber.

Boehly conveyed the impression when he took over at Chelsea that he could not believe how staid and unimaginative and downright stupid the rump of English club ownership was and he was going to revolutionise football’s orthodoxy with the boldness of his vision. Even in the smug world of football’s elite, his hubris was startling.

It has not worked out quite as he planned. Chelsea has turned into a giant revolving door with £1bn worth of players bought in a dizzyingly short period of time, a playing staff so bloated they had to build an extension to the dressing room, so many new arrivals that it’s impossible to keep up with them all and a team that has, inevitably, utterly lost its identity.

Mail Sport’s Chief Sports Writer Oliver Holt

The saddest part of it all is that bright, young talents like Mykhailo Mudryk have been hurled on to the bonfire of the vanities built by Boehly and Eghbali and consumed by its flames. The owners’ legacy to the club, thus far, is that they have turned everything to ash.

Chelsea now sit 14th in the Premier League. They have garnered five points from their opening six games and Pochettino is already asking to be given more time and telling his players they have to ‘grow up’.

There is an awful lot of talent in the squad but precious little leadership. The side does not look like a team. It looks more like a random collection of products purchased at a supermarket trolley dash. A very expensive supermarket, obviously.

There are other ways of doing this if you have competent people at the helm. Loathe though I am to give the Saudi Arabian regime at Newcastle United any credit, they have done a superb job in turning the side from a struggling foot-of-the-table team into a Champions League outfit. 

With Boehly (right) and Behdad Eghbali (left) at the helm, Chelsea has turned into a giant revolving door, with £1billion worth of players bought in a dizzyingly short period of time

Lampard, who was Chelsea’s permanent head coach between 2019 and 2021, returned to Stamford Bridge on an interim basis in April ahead of Mauricio Pochettino’s summer arrival

The Argentine manager has since struggled to get a tune out of Chelsea’s expensive squad

They recruited a good manager and they recruited good players and they recruited good recruiters. They had method. They chose wisely. They bought players who would take them to the next level. They are moving up step by step.

The result is a team that has captured the imagination of the support-base, a team with a solid identity, a team that has spirit and hunger and togetherness, a team that is a fine blend of characters and nationalities. On the pitch, Newcastle is everything Chelsea is not. They have been an example of how to spend money wisely, not throw it into the flames.

It is the opposite at Chelsea. How can it be, for instance, that a regime that has spent more than £1bn on players has been left with a centre forward who has got five times more yellow cards than goals?

In fact, Nicolas Jackson has earned as many yellow cards as the entire team has scored goals in the league. If it wasn’t so dispiriting for Chelsea fans, it would be funny.

An uncomfortable period lies ahead. Perhaps even more uncomfortable than this, if that is possible to imagine. Chelsea have a tough EFL Cup third round tie at home to Brighton on Wednesday but more significant is their run of league fixtures from mid-October through to December.

Meanwhile, Newcastle are going from strength to strength, winning 8-0 against Sheffield United on Sunday after their first Champions League match of the season in Milan last week

Pochettino will need to navigate a tricky run of games from mid-October through to December

Raheem Sterling’s side sit 14th in the Premier League after the first six games of the season

In that period, in consecutive matches, they play Arsenal, Brentford, Spurs, Manchester City, Newcastle, Brighton and Manchester United. Put it another way: things may get worse before they get better.

But Boehly and Eghbali have little choice but to hold their nerve. Their ruse of buying space under the Financial Fair Play cap by signing players on huge wages and outlandishly long contracts was hailed as game-changing genius when they first tried it but it is not looking so smart now.

That tactic relies on the players performing well. Otherwise, Chelsea will be stuck with a collection of stars they don’t want but can’t shift with little chance to refresh the squad to suit the style of a new manager, whenever it is that the next one arrives.

It all smacks of a regime that does not know what it is doing. Boehly’s big idea for English football, don’t forget, was an All-Star Game between North and South. Well, guess what Todd: we’re not in Kansas anymore.

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