Chelsea set to decide upon Mauricio Pochettino future amid sack pressure

Chelsea are set to stick to their plans of holding an end-of-season review to determine the fate of manager Mauricio Pochettino following the final game of the season against Bournemouth, despite club owner Todd Boehly appearing to throw him a lifeline.

The Blues have seen their inconsistency from last season under Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Frank Lampard continue under the Argentinian, with two trips to Wembley this season coupled with heavy defeats to the likes of Wolves, Arsenal and Newcastle United.

Their current position of seventh in the league table is five places higher than they finished last season, with a fifth-place finish still mathematically possible if results go their way. Pochettino still has a year remaining on his contract that he signed at the start of last summer, with the Blues also holding an option to extend that for another year beyond.

Speaking at a Sportico conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, owner Boehly claimed that the football his side have been playing over the last few weeks has been very promising compared to what was seen earlier in the season. He said: "We’ve seen the last two and a half games...in the second half at Aston Villa, Tottenham and West Ham, where we played beautiful football.

"It was so fluid, it was exactly the way we drew it up, when we came out of the back, built up and moved up the pitch, [it was] very organised and the number of shots we had. In those two-and-a-half games, you could really start to see what we were working on coming together. Even the commentary has changed over the last two and a half games. I’ve never seen anything change so quickly."

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Now, it seems as though Boehly, as well as fellow co-owners Behdad Eghbali, Jose E Feliciano and sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart, will hold a meeting with Pochettino days after their final home game of the season against the Cherries to plan out the future for next season.

The club's intention since hiring Pochettino has always been to sort out the future of next season in an end-of-year review, meaning calls for him to be sacked earlier in the season proved meaningless with the management of the club set to stick with him until the end of the season regardless of form or results in the league and other competitions.

With three games left in his first season in charge against Brighton, Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth, Pochettino has recently admitted that he's no longer in contact with Chelsea's owners and that Stewart and Winstanley are the ones to ask about his future at the club.

He claimed: "No [I don't speak to the owners]. To be honest, in the last few months, we didn't cross, or message. We communicated through the sporting directors but nothing has changed. We are not changing my view or my feeling, even in the last few weeks we are not crossing texts."

Despite that, the recent upturn in form seems to suggest that if the Blues can get through the next few weeks with some positive results to end the season, his job is all but assured going into next year, where Financial Fair Play regulations could hamper the Blues if they qualify for European competition.

With Europa League or Conference League qualification on the cards, it's possible that the Blues may struggle to comply with the regulations after their heavy spending over the last few years. However, Boehly has suggested in the past that all their deals fall within the rules and that there's no fear of points deductions or transfer bans, as the club has experienced in the past under Roman Abramovich.