Chelsea and Mauricio Pochettino just started to look like it was going to work.
In his final five games in charge of the club, Mauricio Pochettino won all five of those matches.
It helped Chelsea to finish sixth in the Premier League table and qualify for European football.
But again, while it started to appear that Chelsea and Pochettino could be good for each other, reports since his departure suggest that this marriage was doomed from the get-go.
One of the biggest issues? A couple of Chelsea players who people would have initially been expecting to be the answer to some of the team’s problems.
Mauricio Pochettino’s concerns about Chelsea’s midfield
Midfield should be Chelsea’s biggest strength. After all, Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez are the two most expensive signings in the club’s history.
However, for Pochettino, it appears that the duo were a bit of a problem, or at least as a partnership.
According to The Athletic, Pochettino felt that Caicedo and Fernandez were a midfield pairing that lacked size and power.
The same outlet also claims that the Argentine questioned whether the latter was destructive enough to play as a No.6 or creative enough to be used as a No.8. That is not the kind of thing the club are going to want to hear after spending £107m on the 23-year-old.
Mauricio Pochettino could not have been a success at Chelsea without getting the best out of Moises Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez
Given that Fernandez and Caicedo did cost so much money and are on extremely long contracts, the club are going to expect them to be central figures in the team both now and in the future.
The fact that Pochettino was never completely sold on that idea by the looks of things means he was always going to be doomed.
Sooner or later, Chelsea would have brought someone in who could get the best out of Caicedo and Fernandez as a pair.
They did not spend all of that money on the South American duo to hear that they are not big and powerful enough as a midfield duo for the Premier League. Clearly, then, it is one thing that made the Chelsea job an impossible one for Pochettino in the end.