In his early days with Chelsea, Mauricio Pochettino has been outlining his plans for the team, firstly in the coming month or two of pre-season preparations, as well as our 2023/24 campaign itself.

It is that initial period of working with his new players, and in particular our upcoming tour of the USA, which begins in just over a week when we fly out across the Atlantic on Monday 17 July, where he begins. Pochettino took the opportunity to outline his belief that it will provide the perfect opportunity for the squad to reset and refresh after last season’s disappointment and begin anew, but especially in the case of those players who have joined the Blues over the last year and found it difficult to adapt within a team and club in transition.

‘Different players arrived in different circumstances but of course now is an opportunity,’ he said. ‘We all go together to the USA, on tour in America, and I hope we can help them to achieve their best level, a higher level, and try to perform for Chelsea in the way that people expect.

‘After the last season, now is a new start, a fresh start, and I think they need to show their real quality. But we need to create this platform for them to feel comfortable and breathing space for them to perform and improve. We are really focused on that.

‘I think it is also one of the challenges to help this type of player, the players who arrived in very difficult circumstances to join this football club and I think it is a nice challenge for us, because we love to work in this way, but of course we need to give them the opportunity to show they are able to cope with the pressure of playing with Chelsea and performing their best.’

Throughout his management career, the Argentine has been known for his highly personalised method of coaching, drawing up individual plans for each player tailored to their varying workloads and identified areas for improvement, trawling through every available piece of information to give each player the best chance of reaching their full potential.

It is clear that philosophy and approach to training is central to his plans, when the conversation moves on to specific players who have joined Chelsea over the last year. He refuses to generalise when it comes to how he can get the best out of them, instead pointing out why it all comes down to a variety of different reasons affecting each individual player.

Pochettino has spoken about his excitement of working with Enzo Fernandez and Mykhailo Mudryk, two players whom are still relatively early in their development, but it is not just with the younger members of the squad it is important to take the personal approach.

Whether it is realising full potential, as in Enzo and Mudryk’s case, or rediscovering a more experienced player’s best form, like Raheem Sterling, it still comes down to examining the individual’s own situation to identify causes and solutions, even if eventually there comes a time when responsibility has to shift from coach to player.

‘With Raheem we are talking about a really good player but after the circumstances of landing at a football club that is having some changes, sometimes it is not easy for the player to adapt quick and show the same performance that he maybe had at another club.

‘It’s not always to blame the player, we cannot blame the player. First of all we need to see us and see what is going on and why they are not performing in the way that we expect and then, of course, when all is clear, we cannot give excuses to them to not perform. We need to clear everything and say: “come on, now it is up to you, show me you are ready to play for this football club”.

‘But it’s true that the circumstances didn’t help all these types of players that arrived from different clubs with different expectations. Some because they were so good and scored so many goals and performed really well and others because they were young or really talented. It’s important to understand that we need to take the responsibility before we blame them.’

One thing seems certain as our pre-season begins to gather momentum after Pochettino’s first week as Chelsea head coach at Cobham and we edge towards our summer tour of the USA; he will be examining every single detail for every single player to maximise their and our chances of success in 2023/24.