Former Tottenham star Aaron Lennon believes Mauricio Pochettino's notoriously gruelling training regimes is behind Chelsea’s underwhelming start to the season.
Pochettino has overseen just one win from Chelsea's first six Premier League games - which came against relegation favourites Luton Town - and went down 1-0 at home to Aston Villa at the weekend.
Chelsea have been affected by a string of injuries to first-team players, including Christopher Nkunku, Moises Caicedo, Romeo Lavia, Reece James, Noni Madueke, Benoit Badiashile, Wesley Fofana and more.
Lennon believes the negative news cycle will not be helping the squad, telling Stadium Astro: "That’s the last thing you need. When you’re not getting results on the pitch, and then things are coming out from inside the dressing room, it makes it all a little bit of a circus.
"It’s a bit like Man United at the minute, it’s just story after story, and that’s when, normally, things are not going well and players are unhappy. If you do look at the injury list, I actually looked at it and thought [about] Pochettino’s training methods.
"He does change the training routine. He did it when he came to Spurs. Some of our players, we did struggle at the beginning because it was a completely different load and maybe that is playing a part."
Chelsea have spent more than £1billion across the last three transfer windows, including a further £400m this summer, to completely overhaul the squad for a view to signing young talent.
Lennon believes it is a recipe for disaster for both Chelsea and Pochettino. He added: "I really think Chelsea are in for a tough season.
"We’ve talked about changing so many players and so many managers, and a lot of these players are really young, they’ve not played in the league and they’ve come for big, big price tags. The pressure of what Chelsea fans expect, they’re not going to accept this.
"They’re on five points in six games, no goals in three games. For Chelsea? It’s unheard of. They’re under massive pressure and I really think Pochettino has got a difficult, difficult task at hand."
