Gary Neville backs Mauricio Pochettino to take charge at Chelsea

Gary Neville regards Mauricio Pochettino as a good fit for Chelsea following the sacking of Graham Potter.

The Blues axed boss Potter, who succeeded Thomas Tuchel last September, on Sunday evening after a 2-0 home loss to Aston Villa 24 hours earlier, a result that left them with only four wins in their last 19 Premier League games and lying 11th in the table.

Former Manchester United and England defender Neville feels Chelsea now bringing in ex-Tottenham boss Pochettino would make sense.

Neville said on Sky Sports’ Monday Night Football: “Everything that Chelsea and (owner Todd) Boehly are saying is they’ve spent £600million and they’ve done their spending, apart from a centre-forward, for the next three years.

“If they appoint (Zinedine) Zidane, (Diego) Simeone, (Luis) Enrique, they’re going to want another £300m because they won’t like some of the players they’ve signed.

“They have to appoint a manager who is going to inherit and like the squad that they’ve got – I think that man, because a lot of them are young, is Pochettino.”

Neville also likened the situation there has been at Chelsea to computer game Football Manager and “kids in a sweet shop”.

He said: “I don’t think it is a surprise to anybody – he (Potter) just didn’t look right. At this moment in time, if you look at the ownership, it doesn’t feel right, it doesn’t look right, and usually when those two things happen, it’s not right. His record wasn’t great.

“What the owners talk about, in a long-term project…at the start of the season they had Tuchel, they brought in (Pierre-Emerick) Aubameyang, (Raheem) Sterling, (Kalidou) Koulibaly, more experienced players. Then they flip-flopped and went to a longer-term manager, brought in loads of young players on