Mark Goldbridge: Mauricio Pochettino is not the problem – Chelsea are an absolute mess thanks to Todd Boehly and I could have done a better job

In an exclusive column for talkSPORT.com, Mark Goldbridge unpicks what's gone wrong for Chelsea, and why he'd do a better job in charge at Stamford Bridge than American owner Todd Boehly.

The Manchester United fan couldn't resist a dig at the Glazers in the process, saying Boehly has at least put his hands into his pockets since his Blues takover - but admitted he's inadvertently made the club worse...

One one hand you've got the Glazers who have literally let Old Trafford rot for 20 years, so much so that we might have to leave, put us in debt and have refused to put money in.

And on the other hand you’ve got Todd Boehly, who has put £1billion into Chelsea in players in a year.

It just shows you there is a sweet spot on how to run a football club. Chucking money at it doesn’t necessarily enhance your football club, it can damage it, and I think that’s what we’ve seen with Chelsea.

Their decision-making around such a vast amount of money has been horrific, and you wonder how it’s going to work when you’re stuck with these players who are underperforming on long contracts and on big wages.

With regards to Mauricio Pochettino, I sense things could get worse for Chelsea, especially in the immediate future. They’ve got some really tough Premier League games coming up, they’ve got the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool and are have an FA Cup campaign to navigate with Leeds up next.

I think they’ll struggle and I think inevitably a manager will be an easy target for fans, they always are. It gets to a point where you lose too many games where you do need to be sacked .

But I don’t really think the manager is the root cause of the problem. I don’t think Graham Potter was either. I think Potter might not have been the appointment Chelsea fans wanted, but he wasn’t the problem.

I don’t look at Chelsea and Pochettino and think, ‘Change the manager and everything will be fine’. In the past when Roy Hodgson was manager of Liverpool I was like, ‘Keep him, keep him’, because I knew he was holding them back!

Chelsea’s problems are way bigger than that, and it’s been inflicted on the club with some horrific decision-making. 

I could have done a much better job as their director of football than what’s happened - I think anybody could!

It was ridiculous how they were recruiting players, ‘Oh Liverpool want that player, let’s pay more’, ‘Arsenal want that player, let’s pay more’. There doesn’t seem to be a plan, it just seems to be buy everyone you can and let’s see what happens.

And we’re seeing what happens - it’s an absolute mess!

I don’t understand what’s going on. Is Todd Boehly buying the players? It doesn’t feel like Potter wanted all those players last January.

It could be the most expensive game of football manager we’ve ever seen and it could just be Todd Boehly doing it.

It’s massive naivety, massive expense and with Financial Fair Play now having teeth you do worry about Chelsea.