Pochettino whataboutery in Chelsea endgame ranked from the reasonable to the absurd

After two comprehensive defeats, amid reports of player unrest and job security based primarily on his club’s inability to afford his sacking, Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino has engaged in some excellent whataboutery in the last couple of weeks, in a bid to draw focus away from his undeniably sub-par management of the most expensively assembled squad in Premier League history.

Here’s some of that whataboutery, from the reasonable to the absurd.

Whatabout injuries
We were tempted to let this one slide as he has had an awful lot of injuries to deal with, but it was a far, far bigger problem earlier in the season, and Reece James and Levi Colwill are the only two nailed on starters currently out of action. Hyperbolising the imminent return of Trevoh Chalobah feels more than a tad insincere given the apparent desperation to get rid of him both in the summer and in January.

Whatabout Deivid Washington
This was perhaps more about Pochettino defending the club than himself, but we couldn’t ignore this particular counter-accusation because of how unconvincing it was at the time, before it became almost entirely hollow just a day later.

“Sometimes we forget, but Deivid Washington is here with us,” Pochettino said having been asked by reporters whether Chelsea had enough options up front after Armando Broja left for Fulham on loan on deadline day, presumably meaning ‘you forget’ rather than “we”, though the striker’s level of involvement this season may indeed suggest Pochettino and his staff had forgotten the 18-year-old existed.

He’s played 23 minutes of football and after Pochettino’s gotcha moment forced Chelsea journalists to take long hard looks in the mirror and hang their heads in shame at their lack of knowledge and belief in the £14m summer signing from Santos, Washington was left out of the matchday squad for the 4-2 defeat to Wolves, with the Blues boss instead opting to name two goalkeepers on the bench.

Whatabout Pep and Klopp

“It’s about creating a team. It’s like building a house. You need to be sure of all the steps you take. We are building from zero. Always it takes time. Look at the project of Manchester City or Liverpool. It’s always about time and a very clear leadership like Pep [Guardiola] or Jürgen [Klopp]. It’s so clear from there you build these projects.”

You asked for it, Poch. 23 games into his tenure, Chelsea have accrued 31 points. Liverpool and Manchester City had 39 and 46 respectively after the same number of games under Klopp and Pep. Klopp had spent a grand total of £5m by that point, on Marko Grujic, and even Guardiola’s £200m spend is dwarfed by the £450m spend under Pochettino’s watch in the summer.

But actually this is less about points totals and transfer spends, because it’s very hard to judge where the respective clubs were in terms of squad balance at the time the managers were appointed, and it’s fair to say that Klopp and Guardiola had more of a say on where that money was being spent than Pochettino, who’s at the mercy of co-sporting directors-cum-cradle robbers Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart. The problem with these comments is the rod Pochettino is making for his own back.

If you’re going to compare yourself with anyone, don’t choose two Premier League greats and undisputed club legends, particularly having got angry when journalists compare you to Graham Potter, a man we would suggest Pochettino has a far better chance of stacking up well against.

Whatabout goalkeepers

“You have plenty of [different players] starting with the two keepers that won the Champions League. Kepa [Arrizabalaga] and [Edouard] Mendy were here last season and now we have two keepers that are young and came from different clubs, one who didn’t play at Brighton and another is from MLS.”

So much to unpick here. Firstly, we’re not even sure Kepa would class himself as a keeper who “won the Champions League” given he played just one game in the 2020/21 season, the group stage dead rubber against FC Krasnodar. And yes, Mendy was brilliant in that Champions League run, but he was God awful after that; so bad in fact that Kepa – statistically the worst goalkeeper in the Premier League in his previous stint as top dog – replaced him as No.1.

It was also a stunningly derogatory way for a supposed expert man-manager to refer to his two goalkeeping options, with Pochettino apparently so appalled to have a Brighton reject and some nobody from across the pond to call upon that he refuses to mention them by name, like they’re sexual deviants or villains chasing The Boy Who Lived.

Whatabout “all of the things”

“Too many things to fix before talking tactics and talking football, but we are trying to fix all of the things.”

We’re perfectly willing to accept that these offhand comments in press conferences can be run with and blown out of proportion. In reality Pochettino probably has talked a bit about tactics and a bit about football in his eight months as manager of Chelsea Football Club.

But he might be wise to choose his words more carefully after two results in which the tactics were unclear – both to us watching and the players playing – and the football was head-in-hands depressing to the point he and his team were booed off the pitch, and perhaps spend less time on “all of the things” which we reckon – given our admittedly inferior knowledge of the inner workings of football management – should be less of a priority right now.

Whatabout Liverpool

“When we lost to Liverpool, it was: massive fail, oh look at Chelsea, how bad it is. [When] Liverpool lost to Arsenal, I didn’t hear anything.”

Just wonderful on so many levels, the most gratifying being the assumption that every Chelsea result must be put into context by their opponent’s subsequent fixture, meaning only three of Chelsea’s nine wins really counted for anything.

We’re also pretty sure people weren’t suggesting Chelsea losing to Liverpool was a “massive fail” – our very first sentence of 16 Conclusions made the point that the Jurgen Klopp announcement meant Liverpool would have beaten anybody. The knives only really came out after the 4-2 defeat to Wolves, though obviously we should really wait for their next game against Brentford to make any sound judgement on how bad Chelsea were.

It’s also weird to use a Liverpool defeat to defend himself. Had Liverpool beat Arsenal it would have been reasonable to focus on that result as evidence that Chelsea had lost to a very good football team. But he essentially highlighted that the team Chelsea were battered by were battered by someone else. How much worse are Chelsea than Arsenal?

And finally, why would he have “heard anything” about Liverpool being in crisis having lost to Arsenal? They’re top of the Premier League, and far more pertinent than that, Mauricio Pochettino doesn’t manage Liverpool, so he’ll have to excuse reporters in press conferences for failing to ask him questions about them.