Last season was nothing short of a disaster for Chelsea. Despite spending an eye-watering amount of money, the Blues could only muster a 12th-placed finish in the Premier League.

As such, incoming manager Mauricio Pochettino has a monumental challenge on his hands. He needs to drag Chelsea out of the doldrums – given Todd Boehly’s trigger-happy tendency when it comes to sacking managers, he will also have to do so very quickly.

It would make sense for Pochettino to completely overhaul the way Chelsea play – there were several reasons as to why their multitude of setups did not work last season.

What formation did Chelsea generally play last season?

This is a difficult question to answer, as Chelsea played under three different head coaches last season – Thomas Tuchel, Graham Potter and Frank Lampard.

Tuchel and Potter generally used the 5-2-2-1 formation, with the wing-backs pushing forward, while Lampard alternated between a 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1 lineup.

Will Pochettino look to stick with Tuchel/Potter’s 5-2-21? Or will he opt to play a system that is closer to Lampard’s Chelsea setup?

How could this change moving forward?

While Pochettino was at Tottenham Hotspur, he generally lined up with a 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 formation – he also used these two setups predominantly during his time at Southampton and PSG.

As such, it can be expected that Chelsea will take on one of these two shapes. While there is some debate as to whether Pochettino may adjust his system to accommodate Chelsea’s unbalanced squad, it isn’t really in his nature to do so.

Additionally, some may be worried that Pochettino could be planning to set up Chelsea in a similar manner to how Lampard did – but the Argentinian’s focus on coordinated pressing should iron out most of the kinks that came with Lampard’s system.

With that being said, Pochettino will need to establish a new tactical identity at Stamford Bridge. On far too many occasions last season, several players on the pitch simply looked lost – as a unit, the squad was very disjointed.

Pochettino’s first goal must be to establish key roles for positions and players – if he cannot do this, it is unlikely that Chelsea’s fortunes will improve any time soon.