Will Mauricio Pochettino finally get a tune out of his Brighton tribute act?
Since taking over Chelsea, Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali have spent so much money trying to emulate a certain Premier League club on the south coast that it’s a wonder they didn’t just buy Brighton in the first place. They hired Brighton’s manager and his team of five backroom staff, just two of whom – a goalkeeping coach and data analyst – are still at the club just over a year on. They bought Marc Cucurella, followed more recently by Robert Sánchez and Moisés Caicedo from Brighton, as well as poaching the Seagulls’ head of player recruitment. In all, Chelsea have contributed more than £220m to the Brighton war chest in the past 13 months – the cost of more than two Amex Stadiums, 84 Kaoru Mitomas or 44,000,000 consecutive goes on “the speed demon of Brighton Palace Pier” that is the Turbo Coaster (minimum height: 1m 03cm).
To say Chelsea haven’t got much bang for all those bucks would be quite the understatement, as with each lorry load of cash the Chelsea beancounters reverse into the Falmer loading bay, their club descends further into outright farce while the beneficiaries of their extreme largesse look increasingly likely to take their place as one of the Premier League’s Big Six grandees. On Wednesday at Stamford Bridge, Boehly and Eghbali could end up with further omelettes’ worth of egg on their maws when their expensively assembled but hopelessly out-of-tune Brighton tribute act host the club they have failed so dismally to be in the Rumbelows Cup.
Having scored just five goals in six league games this season and with no European matches with which to concern themselves, the Coca-Cola Cup represents one of only two chances Mauricio Pochettino and his overpriced squad of misfits have of getting knocked out in the last 16 of a competition this season. With the natives increasingly restless in the wake of Chelsea’s latest home defeat at the hands of Aston Villa, this assignment has taken on the kind of must-win quality not usually associated with Chelsea’s forays into the early stages of a competition they would normally consider beneath them. In the extremely unlikely event that he has even the vaguest idea what it actually is, fans have called on Pochettino to pick his strongest available team, although it’s a task made easier by Chelsea’s increasingly long list of the lame, the halt and the Naughty Stepped.
Amid possibly ridiculous talk that his position is already under threat, Pochettino has been fielding questions about his employers’ habit of dropping by the Stamford Bridge dressing room unannounced for post-match pow-wows with their players. “I don’t see it in a bad way,” he tooted. “For me it is good, always, if they share with [the coaching staff], then can say hello to the players. The difference is if they came for some speech or different things, then maybe that is different. In the way they came, of course they are very welcome. They own the club, they can do whatever they want.” Messrs Boehly and Eghbali may well pay another visit again on Wednesday night, but if it’s the one we suspect it will be, Brighton owner Tony Bloom might be well served performing a head-count on the team bus before the short drive home.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“That was a zoo. David Blaine was doing card tricks that they never paid for … we picked up the bill from two or three hotels, which were never paid, the bill for the train which they got [Michael] Jackson on from London … it was embarrassing. You know when a switch goes? I was like: ‘I’m not having that.’ I didn’t even think about the numbers. It was: ‘I’m going to get involved’” – Exeter president Julian Tagg tells Ben Fisher about the fun and games that forced him and other fans to take back control of the club and steer it into much calmer waters.
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