Mauricio Pochettino ‘keen’ to bring in former Spurs chief scout and sporting director Steve Hitchen at Chelsea, too — report

Mauricio Pochettino looks set to be the next Chelsea manager, or at least be offered the chance to become the next Chelsea manager — The Times report that the offer could be made by tonight (Saturday) — and if he does accept, he is set to bring along his usual crew of assistants and analysts (Jesús Pérez, Miguel D’Agostino, Toni Jiménez, Sebastiano Pochettino).

One interesting wrinkle, according to the Mail, could be that Poch (who should have plenty of leverage in these talks) is apparently also “keen” to bring in Steve Hitchen, who was the chief scout at Spurs during the last two years of Pochettino’s time there — and then was promoted to technical director for a couple years as well, before leaving last year (with Fabio Paratici calling the shots by then). Hitchen also held scouting roles at Derby County, QPR, and Liverpool while more recently has been linked with the sporting director position at Olympique Lyonnais, after similar links with Newcastle, Everton, and Celtic.

Could we use more cooks in the scouting kitchen at Chelsea? That’s one of the many departments that has been completely revamped from the ground up by the new ownership, so why not; bring them all!