Chelsea should be 4th, not 14th

No Premier League goals in 285 minutes. Defeat to Aston Villa signalling their worst start to a league season in 45 years. Nine senior players out injured – currently the most of any side in the league. Two more suspended for the trip to Fulham on Monday.

The unwanted records, statistics, hard truths and problems are piling up on the desk in Mauricio Pochettino’s glass-walled office at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground, right next to the large bowl of lemons he believes, if they are just given enough time, will soak up the bad energy and turn around his team’s fortunes.

But is it – just maybe – not as bad as it seems on the surface? Bear with me on this one.

The fundamental principle of co-owner and chairman Todd Boehly’s billion-pound project is signing the world’s best young players on long contracts so they can compete for trophies now and long into the future.

Boehly’s unprecedented wade into the transfer market has left Chelsea with the youngest squad in the Premier League – the average player age of 23.7 years old almost a year younger than next youngest Arsenal. And so many of their key players are, in footballing terms, practically children.

Their attack hinges on Nicolas Jackson, who only recently turned 22. With Reece James and Ben Chilwell injured, their captain against Aston Villa was Connor Gallagher, who is 23. Even when fit, captain James is also only 23.

Enzo Fernandez, the £106m midfielder tasked with making the team tick, is 22. Back-up right-back Malo Gusto, sent off for a reckless and unnecessary challenge against Villa, is 20.

Levi Colwill is a potential England centre-back but is still only 20. Record £115m signing Moises Caicedo is 21.

It all requires a careful manager who can turn young, inexperienced players into trophy winners and Champions League regulars. That’s the idea, anyway. But if there’s a coach who can make this work, it’s Pochettino.

“It’s a difficult era for managing footballers,” Pochettino wrote in his 2017 book, Brave New World.

“These days you have to spell it all out for them if you want them to be comfortable, as if everything were plotted on a map.

“Managers nowadays are more like architects or highway engineers. You spend the day mapping out and reminding them of the journey because footballers’ concentration spans are shorter and shorter. The electronic gadgets surrounding us are to blame for the players constantly needing new sources of stimulation, so we have to aim for variety and try to keep their minds fresh.”

There’s a subtle but important distinction here between Pochettino’s perception of young players and the notion, believed by many in the older generations of managers, that young players can’t handle criticism and must be wrapped in cotton wool.

In Pochettino’s view, while players need everything carefully planned for them and enough fun and variation to keep them engaged, he will not hold back from being tough on them and has every confidence they can take it.

As one story goes, at Spurs during the 2016 preseason, not long after they had challenged for the Premier League title and qualified for the Champions League, the players were caught out by one such bollocking. Everything had been going fine on a tour of Australia until Kyle Walker turned up late for a team meeting, and Pochettino lost it.

It is thought to have brought back memories of the way the players capitulated when the title was no longer attainable after that ferocious Battle of the Bridge draw with Chelsea. In the remaining two games they lost to Southampton and were thrashed away to Newcastle on the final day.

Pochettino felt Walker’s lapse time-keeping was indicative of a group of players who were letting their standards drop after working so hard. They had recently played a friendly against Atletico Madrid and Pochettino showed them a video clip of Fernando Torres chasing after the ball well into stoppage time.

Torres was a World Cup and Champions League winner in the twilight of his career and had been travelling for around 30 hours before the game but he kept running until the very end, Pochettino pointed out. And his side were winning!

Pochettino told his players they should be ashamed of themselves for the way they finished last season. And if his intention had been to continue driving them onwards, it worked. They finished in the top four for three more seasons, and reached the Champions League final.

Back at Chelsea, after Jackson was suspended for one game for an accumulation of needless yellow cards and Gusto was banned for three for a needless bad tackle, Pochettino told his players they need to grow up and take some responsibility.

Armando Broja is the only striker available to replace Jackson and he has played 14 minutes of football in 10 months, due to injury. Oh, and he’s just turned 22. There’s no obvious cover for Gusto and James.

These are trying times, but Pochettino’s methods have worked before and they will work again.

There are small signs in training. Such as with Mykhailo Mudryk, who is slowly rebuilding confidence that has taken a battering. Pochettino and the young Ukrainian play games of crossbar challenge – seeing who can hit the crossbar from the edge of the box the most times – offering him some little wins, provided he earns them (Pochettino is quite good at it!).

And then there are the statistics that paint an entirely different picture to the one laid out at the beginning of this column.

This season Chelsea are seriously underperforming in their xG – the goals they should score based on their chances – and when the number gurus at Opta Analyst ran an Expected Points model this week it returned the verdict that Chelsea should be fourth, not 14th.

Maybe those lemons – and Chelsea’s manager – simply need a little bit more time.