The moment has almost arrived for Chelsea to prove they are a serious football club. Once this season ends, their decision on Mauricio Pochettino's future as head coach will tell us whether club co-owners Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali have learned the lessons of their chaotic two years in charge or if they remain lost in their own version of fantasy football.
Pochettino is almost at the halfway stage of his two-year contract at Stamford Bridge, but the former Tottenham Hotspur and Paris Saint-Germain coach still has no idea whether he will be around to complete the full terms of his agreement.
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Just last week, Pochettino urged his Chelsea bosses to put a stop to the "stupid rumours" about his position after admitting the only updates he gets about his situation are from what he hears and reads in the media.
"If I have one more year on my contract here, and no one says nothing, suppose that I am going to be here," Pochettino told a news conference. "We don't know at the moment. I suppose I have one more year on my contract and that I am going to be here."
Boehly and Eghbali could easily banish the doubts over Pochettino by giving an answer, one way or another, to the question of whether he will still be in charge of the team next season. But the ongoing uncertainty only points to a bigger question about what they actually want or expect as owners.
They probably expect much more from their £1 billion-plus investment in the playing squad than a late-season surge into contention for Europa League qualification. However, considering where Chelsea were when Pochettino arrived last summer, the team's trajectory right now should be a pointer towards a brighter future.
This time last year, Chelsea were heading to a 12th-place finish in the Premier League, 27 points adrift of the top four, as Boehly and Eghbali's disastrous first year as owners ended with Pochettino becoming their fourth manager in that short space of time. They fired Champions League-winning coach Thomas Tuchel less than a month into their first season at the helm, replacing him with Graham Potter. But the former Brighton & Hove Albion boss only lasted eight months in the job before he was sacked and former manager Frank Lampard returned to see out the final 11 games of the season.
And while last summer saw another bout of heavy spending (over £400 million) on some of the brightest young talent in the game -- including Moisés Caicedo, Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku and Cole Palmer -- it also coincided with the exits of a group of experienced players including Kai Havertz, Mason Mount, Mateo Kovacic, N'Golo Kanté, César Azpilicueta, Christian Pulisic and Kalidou Koulibaly. Pochettino walked into a football club that resembled a washing machine on a top-speed cycle. The club was destabilised by new ownership, managerial churn and a policy, driven by the new owners, of replacing proven, experienced performers with youngsters yet to fulfil their potential.
