Chelsea are a bonfire of vanity, justifying axing Mauricio Pochettino with their amorphous drivel. Todd Boehly’s yes-men are back to square one, writes OLIVER HOLT

It’s starting to feel like Chelsea’s new owners are addicted to chaos. They must like it. They have to feel comfortable with it. Maybe they have a strange preference for looking stupid. Perhaps they take a perverse pride in taking the opposite view as everyone else.

After all, that has been their goal since Todd Boehly and Behdad Eghbali took over the club two years ago. They know better than the traditional owners of English football, who haven’t made nearly enough profit from the bloated cash cow that is the Premier League, and they’re going to show us all how it’s done.

So it should come as no surprise that, just as Mauricio Pochettino was finally beginning to understand the anarchy of the billions of dollars in player signings that Boehly and Eghbali had inflicted on the club, it had to be decided that this was the right time to let the club to go. He walks away.

Congratulations guys. You just lost a manager who had the courage, stature and strength of character to get through the hard part. You just lost the manager who changed something no one thought was possible and started to tame the chaos.

You just lost progress. You just went back to square one.

Chelsea’s Behdad Eghbali (left) and Todd Boehly (right) seem addicted to chaos

Pochettino (centre) led a revival at Chelsea towards the end of the season, after a turbulent start to the season

The decision to let Pochettino leave is a shame, even if many expected it. Chelsea won their last five games in a row and ended the season with a real feeling that they were making progress and that the problems that had dogged them for the early parts of the season were behind them.

Now they’ve sacrificed all that because of an amorphous rant about how Pochettino doesn’t fit into the fabric of the club. Loosely translated, that seems to mean that the owners want more power for themselves and the strategic yes-men who keep telling them that their models suggest Chelsea should have won the league by 25 points.

As a result, they want less power in the hands of the manager. Even if the manager begins to prove, as Pochettino has done, that he can turn the hodgepodge of signings left to him by people who have proven they don’t know the game into an effective unit.

It was Pochettino who built the platform for Cole Palmer to flourish and become one of the players of the season. It was Pochettino who finally began to understand the army of players at his disposal; so many players that they had to expand the locker room to accommodate them all.

After all that chaos, Pochettino conjured up a sixth-place finish for Chelsea, which was a minor miracle given the circumstances. That was one place above state-owned Newcastle United and two places above Manchester United. It qualified Chelsea for European football next season.

The Blues finished sixth in the table after winning their last five Premier League matches

It appears that Boehly (left) and Eghbali (right) have sacrificed all the progress they have made in recent weeks by parting ways with Pochettino by mutual consent on Tuesday evening.

It may not be what Chelsea are used to, but it is the absolute maximum they could have expected after such a chaotic recruitment wave.

It is said that the owners were disappointed not to qualify for the Champions League. If they want to know who is really to blame, all they have to do is look in the mirror.

It is said Pochettino left after being subject to an internal review led by sporting directors Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart and Eghbali. That’s also bitterly funny. The last time I read anything about Winstanley and Stewart, they were in joyful self-satisfaction about their wit.

It is rare for sporting directors to pay the price for their incompetence. They often make the manager pay for them.

Chelsea are now said to be looking for a young manager who fits into their club structure. Decipher that and they go looking for a doll. It almost feels like they were annoyed that Pochettino was starting to do so well because he was having success on his own terms.

Roberto De Zerbi’s name has been mentioned, but he is certainly far too independent and smart to work under the kind of restrictions Chelsea seem to want to impose on the next incumbent.

Pochettino is the third permanent manager to leave the club under Chelsea’s new ownership

Thomas Tuchel (left) and Graham Potter (right) were both sacked by Chelsea’s current owners

Kieran McKenna’s name is being mentioned after all the success he achieved at Ipswich Town, where he secured successive promotions from League One to the Premier League, but anyone on the rise like McKenna would have to think very, very carefully about entrusting their careers to the current Chelsea regime.

They only have to look at the hand dealt to a supremely competent manager like Graham Potter to realize that moving to Stamford Bridge is the managerial equivalent of happily wandering around in a threshing machine.

And so Pochettino has gone, sacrificed on a bonfire of the vanities of the people who run the club. Pochettino is the third permanent manager to leave the club under new ownership.

Losing one manager can be considered a misfortune. Losing two looks like carelessness. Three losses bears all the hallmarks of a regime in a blindfold, trying to pin a tail on a donkey.