Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea are dynamic, error-prone and flawed – but increasingly fun

Somewhere in the 82 seconds that separated Cole Palmer’s second nerveless penalty and the shot that cannoned into Scott McTominay, wrong-footing Andre Onana in front of the Matthew Harding Stand, Stamford Bridge arrived at a crescendo of sound and energy not witnessed since Manchester City visited in November.

There were eight goals and 19 combined shots on target that night, but the manner of Chelsea’s wild 4-3 win over Manchester United made even their 4-4 draw with Pep Guardiola’s defending champions — also sealed by a late Palmer intervention — seem like a chess match.

Styles make fights and Erik ten Hag’s stuttering United are in many respects a mirror image of Mauricio Pochettino’s youthful Chelsea: dynamic in attack but error-prone in defence with a startlingly flawed midfield and an unbalanced structure that invites chaos. The result was a game that existed in an almost permanent state of transition between two teams incapable of sustaining any pretence of control, the Spiderman meme in football form.

It felt like a sarcastic riposte to the positional puritanism that yielded a high-functioning but excruciatingly dull stalemate between Premier League title rivals City and Arsenal on Sunday. Chelsea and United each had more shot attempts at Stamford Bridge than Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta’s teams managed combined at the Etihad Stadium, attacking momentum ebbing and flowing with the tide of individual errors.

Rather than bearing any resemblance to the cohesive, controlled football Pochettino and Ten Hag are aspiring to produce, it felt like a throwback to some of the wilder big games witnessed in a less tactically rigorous bygone era of Premier League football — and so too did the atmosphere at Stamford Bridge, with the Chelsea fans’ patience sorely tested by the collapse that followed Moises Caicedo’s careless pass in between a rousing start and a thrilling finale.

A better, more mature Chelsea side would never have allowed such a poor United back into the game after racing into a 2-0 lead inside 19 minutes, giving the visitors life with the self-inflicted wounds that have become part of their identity: a loose pass that sets an opposing attacker through on goal, an unmarked header at the back post, an unchecked counter-attack.

But it is undeniable that overcoming those setbacks, scoring so late and in such dramatic fashion to rescue the game, is much more emotionally satisfying — a reality underlined by Pochettino’s raucous celebrations with his staff at the final whistle as Madness classic ‘One Step Beyond’ did its traditional job of turning Stamford Bridge into a sea of triumphant limbs.

There is no such catharsis in boring old competence, and after the match Pochettino voiced his hope that the moment of shared joy might provide the foundation for a healthier relationship between his inconsistent young team and a disillusioned match-going Chelsea supporter base. “We need to connect because if not it’s tough for the players,” he admitted.

Such a sentiment feels optimistic when trust remains so thin on the ground for everyone at Chelsea bar Palmer, whose personal approval rating is unimpeachable (it is fair to say the same can no longer be said for Mason Mount). Whatever the chaos the 21-year-old forward remains the one player in Pochettino’s squad with access to greater speed and clarity of thought and while at times against United he hunted for shots a little too aggressively, there was no doubt he would deliver when his key moments in the game arrived.

“His best skill, one of the best skills is his mentality, the capacity to deal with the pressure,” Pochettino said of Palmer. “He’s young, it’s his first season playing very consistently. It’s amazing the way he deals with the pressure. He can be a very good player. With the performance, it’s impossible to say he’s not a top player, no? But he can still improve.”

Pochettino can take credit for his substitutions; Raheem Sterling and Carney Chukwuemeka gave Chelsea fresh attacking thrust as they pushed for an equaliser in the final 20 minutes, while Noni Madueke brilliantly exploited a tired Diogo Dalot shortly after his late introduction. But there were long stretches of this game in which he and Ten Hag appeared no more than helpless bystanders as their teams were repeatedly confronted by their glaring limitations.

Then there is the defensive crisis. Three goals for United at Stamford Bridge means Chelsea have conceded 25 goals in 12 matches across all competitions since their last clean sheet, in a goalless draw at home to Aston Villa in the FA Cup on January 26. It extends their streak of conceding two or more goals to six games, and Pochettino’s side remain firmly on course to set a club record for goals against in a Premier League season.

Palmer is 21 but key to everything good about the new Chelsea (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)

Chelsea have lost only twice in 90 minutes since that Villa draw. Beyond indicating that their attacking production is healthy, that record doubles as compelling evidence of the genuine spirit Pochettino has instilled. They play for each other, they play for their coach and they have begun to establish a helpful habit of scoring late goals.

That is identifiable progress, set against the bleak depths of the 2022-23 season. There is no question that Pochettino’s team has much more to recommend it than the disjointed mess that doomed his predecessor Graham Potter, but concerns about balance and structure are becoming more prominent, not less; the only match in the last nine Premier League seasons to feature more than the 47 combined shot attempts at Stamford Bridge on Thursday was Chelsea’s 2-2 draw with Burnley (51 combined shot attempts) four days earlier.

Pochettino needs to be able to point to more than emotional victories in order to justify his continued presence at the head of this Chelsea project. Adrenaline is a fight or flight response, not a sustainable sporting strategy — even if it can create the kind of intense high that buckled United and, for a few days at least, lifted the gloom over Stamford Bridge.

(Robin Jones/Getty Images)