By Ian McCullough
Mauricio Pochettino admits there’s little love shown to him by the Chelsea fans but insists there is an appreciation of the job he is doing.
Pochettino has endured a difficult first season in charge with Chelsea sitting in ninth spot with just five matches of the season remaining, despite the club spending over a billion pounds on new players.
Last week’s 5-0 thrashing by Arsenal increased the pressure on the 52-year-old who has just one year left on his contract and has struggled to win over fans largely due to his connections with Tottenham.
But the Argentine, who will tonight manage his 400th game in English football against his former club, eight years to the day since the infamous Battle of Stamford Bridge, acknowledged he needs time to win over the Blues faithful and claimed his personality is often misunderstood.
However, he said he’s enjoyed listening to feedback from fans while walking his dog – a Rhodesian Ridgeback called Sansa – around the upmarket west London streets where he lives.
Pochettino said: “If I follow social media, it’s one thing, but when I walk every day with my dog I feel … I won’t say love, but the appreciation from the fans.
“On social media, it can be, ‘Hey, you must do this, do that.’ But when I am on the street, the people are really good. They appreciate and give us credit for working in a project and process that is so difficult.
“I spend one hour, one hour and a half walking with my dog, maybe it is because they are scared of my dog – because it is a big dog.
“Maybe they are nice to me because of that!
“But fans sometimes get the image that is not real. Are fake. Maybe sometimes my words are taken or a photograph is taken of me looking sad but I am not a sad person.
