Chelsea have put too much focus on the potential of players and ‘FORGOTTEN’ about the experience needed for a ‘winning mentality’, claims Blues legend Marcel Desailly

• Chelsea are 11th in the Premier League under Mauricio Pochettino this season
• They have spent £1billion focusing on recruitment young players with potential
• Mauricio Pochettino vs Alan Shearer – who is right? Listen to It’s All Kicking Off

Chelsea legend Marcel Desailly has criticised his former club for focusing too much on potential and forgetting experience.

The Blues sit 11th in the Premier League table after another poor start to the season that has seen them win three, draw three and lose four of their first 10 games under new manager Mauricio Pochettino.

There were high hopes for their fortunes under the new manager but it’s been the same story as last season so far, despite spending over £1billion on transfer fees in the last three transfer window.

Owner Todd Boehly has changed the club’s recruitment philosophy of late, signing younger players rather than proven talent, including the likes of Cole Palmer, Enzo Fernandez and Nicolas Jackson.

But it’s a tactic, according to Desailly via Get French Football News, that is backfiring, and the importance of experience in a successful side, he said, has been ignored. 

Chelsea legend Marcel Desailly has claimed that the club have put too much focus on recruiting players with potential

Desailly played for Cheslea between 1998 and 2004 and is regarded as one of the best centre backs ever

Chelsea have spent over £1billion on transfers in the last year in a youth-focused approach to signing players

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‘So it’s very hard to criticise,’ he began. ‘The only thing that I’d say though is that it is an error of communication. They are carried away by the potential that each player that they’ve bought has, because they’ve forgotten about one element, knowing that to play football at the highest level.

‘To attain what we call in French la culture de la gagne, the winning mentality, you need experience – nascent talent is never enough to presume immediate performance. And that’s the only thing where I’d say they’ve made a mistake, where they keep thinking, with the coach Pochettino, “no, this year we’ll be title challengers with the team that we have”.

‘Right from the start of the season, you could see that they can’t be title challengers, it was obvious. But they have put together players of great potential and have positioned themselves in terms of business, because if they didn’t buy the players now for a little above value, they wouldn’t have been able to buy them later. 

Desailly made 222 appearances for Chelsea across a six-year period either side of the turn of the century, and was part of the side that won the 2000 FA Cup and 1998 Super Cup.

The now-55-year-old retired before Chelsea’s real period of success began under Roman Abramovic, but is regarded as one of the best centre backs of all time.

Mauricio Pochettino was appointed this summer but has been unable to turn the Blues’ fortunes around

Desailly claimed new owner Todd Boehly (right) has ‘forgotten’ about experience needed to form a ‘winning mentality’

He called for clearer communication between the club and the fans in terms of what the project and plan is, with the investment well-known and, so far, showing little reward.

‘The only thing is they need to know how to educate the supporters by telling them hang on – we’re going to have a year or two of transition but after that – wow – we’ve built up enormous potential.

‘But the fans and the media don’t want to hear that. They’ve seen the investment, they want immediate results. But that’s what I think of Chelsea’s idea. Pochettino isn’t a coach who has built up his philosophy like a Mourinho, a Tuchel – he’s a coach who needs to coach top players, top teams. 

‘Now he needs to rethink all his coaching to adapt to players who are in theory at a very high level but for whom you need to recreate the basic foundations of play.’

IT’S ALL KICKING OFF! 

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