Gary Neville has eased up on his continued criticism of Todd Boehly, praising the American owner for chosing Mauricio Pochettino to be the next Chelsea manager.
Having spent most of the summer hammering him and Clearlake Capital for their scattergun approach to life at the club, Neville continued to voice his scathing opinions of how the Blues have been run this season as Thomas Tuchel and Graham Potter were moved on. Now Pochettino is close being appointed, the former Manchester United defender is optimistic for improvement.
A deal was agreed with the 51-year-old last week, football.london understands, and he will takeover from Frank Lampard at the end of this season. For the remaining three weeks of this campaign he has the chance to liaise with the interim head coach and also get started on plans for the summer.
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Despite being positive about the upcoming year for Chelsea under Pochettino, Neville couldn't resist another dig at Boehly, saying: "Todd Boehly is not a new owner it feels like he's been here about 200 years, we've talked that much about him!"
He did then praise the choice to go with the Argentine boss, adding: "I love Pochettino. I said a couple of weeks ago that they could be a Mauricio Pochettino away, and refining to the squad and adding one or two more players in the right positions that they're short in from having a very good season next season.
"Pochettino will not take a job on where he didn't think there was huge potential to get Chelsea back up to the very top of the league. He's done it at Tottenham, it's not a too disimilar situation to what he faced at Tottenham where he had a group of players that didn't run as much as he wanted them to, maybe a bit older than he liked.
"Now he's going to have a group of younger players at Chelsea, with some older players that maybe don't run as much as he'd like them to, not as organised as he should be, they haven't got the patterns of play that they want but I thinkhe could put that into them very, very quickly and appointing him early, getting him in place, looking forward to pre-season and the plans, the recruitment and what they're going to do."
His first task in charge will be to formulate an overview of the squad as well as making plans for a mass exodus of stars this summer. Chelsea's 32-man squad needs to be cut down to a core group of closer to 23, and that is without adding in new signings and returning loanees.
As a demanding character that was able to overhauls the bloated Spurs squad in 2014 there is already precedent for him putting the foot down and ruffling feathers at Cobham. Neville believes it's a stance that will help his side but also put some distance between himself and Boehly.
"He will bring stability straight away," he added on the Gary Neville podcast. "He won't have any nonesense around him, all that stuff about owners turning up in the dressing room. Pochettino isn't going to have that, he isn't going to accept that. From that point of view it's a really good move.
"I don't think Chelsea can lose with this appointment. He'll make massive improvements straight away."
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