Mauricio Pochettino needs period of calm at Chelsea after manic summer of transfers

On his first Monday in his new job, Mauricio Pochettino should this morning watch out for the revolving door at Chelsea headquarters. As he settles in as manager, he can anticipate as many farewells as greetings, his urgent challenge to reduce the wild guesswork around what his first line-up will look like come mid-August and the opening fixture of the new Premier League season against Liverpool.

Pochettino inherits a squad where high turnover has become endemic. Less than 10 months ago, when Thomas Tuchel, one of four different men to have managed Chelsea since last September, took charge for the last time, he had a central midfield of Mateo Kovacic and Mason Mount, supplemented by Jorginho in the later stages of a shock 1-0 defeat at Dinamo Zagreb.

That trio had served Tuchel in the winning final of the 2021 Champions League; in Croatia, Tuchel would have like N’Golo Kante involved and regretted the absence, through injury, of the Frenchman who, said Tuchel, “who simply makes players better around him.”

Up front in Zagreb were Kai Havertz and the then new recruit Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang. Kalidou Koulibaly, freshly signed from Napoli, joined Cesar Azpilicueta in an experienced back three. Edu Mendy had been left out from the previous fixture to give the goalkeeping gloves to Kepa Arrizabalaga. As Tuchel chased in vain an equaliser, Hakim Ziyech came on, as did Christian Pulisic.

By this September, Pochettino expects to be giving instructions to none of those players except perhaps Kepa, a measure of the extraordinary instability and churn of personnel at Chelsea – a club that changed ownership in May 2022 and has since spent over £650 million on transfer fees, appointed two ‘permanent’ and two interim managers and