Jamie O’Hara fears Chelsea’s decision to hire Mauricio Pochettino is unlikely to be successful
Jamie O’Hara is worried that Mauricio Pochettino’s appointment as Chelsea’s manager won’t be successful and claims the 51-year-old has unfinished business at Tottenham Hotspur.
Progressive negotiations with the Argentine have brought Chelsea closer to hiring the former ex-Southampton manager, and it is believed that a contract might be confirmed within the next week.
Chelsea needed more time to find the right manager for the team, so they named Frank Lampard as an interim manager. After interviewing Luis Enrique and Julian Nagelsmann, Pochettino was the candidate who captivated the Blues Board.
Due to his five-and-a-half-year stint at rival Tottenham, some Blues supporters are opposed to the prospect of his recruitment.
The rivalry between Chelsea and Spurs has been one of the most ferocious in the Premier League. Spurs are also looking for a new manager after Antonio Conte departed the team by mutual consent.
O’Hara, however, believes Pochettino won’t be a success if he is chosen to lead Chelsea, (h/t Express) as he stated in an interview with talkSPORT:
“Don’t even get me started. You’ve got Pochettino coming in. That’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. It won’t work. He was made for Tottenham. There’s unfinished business. The only reason he’s not going back there is because Daniel Levy is an idiot, and he doesn’t want to go back on old ground because they fell out when he left.”
It will be too soon to predict that the former Paris Saint-Germain manager will not be successful. Though many fans won’t approve of his appointment because he managed a rival team, ex-Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho managed Tottenham and received the backing of the fans.
So did Antonio Conte and Andre Villas-Boas but it has hardly been the other way around for us to know how Chelsea fans will react to such a situation. If Pochettino is hired, the supporters should unquestionably support him and the changes he plans to make to the club.
O’Hara is known for his blunt takes but he seems to be reaching a bit here. Probably a little disappointed that it isn’t his team that are all over ‘Poch’. Of course, the 51-year-old Argentine will have better knowledge of the Lilywhites but one can argue that Chelsea, who have won major trophies in the past decade regularly, will be a step up for him.
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It will be a challenge he is hopefully open to undertaking. At Spurs, they can keep him on board for more than five years without a trophy but he may not get that long in SW6. Of course, his project will need time but seeing the fates of Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter, we can say Todd Boehly isn’t a patient man at all.