Mauricio Pochettino to ‘help clinch’ N’Golo Kanté contract renewal at Chelsea — report

Mauricio Pochettino isn’t yet the Chelsea manager — nor is he even officially or unofficially confirmed as the new incoming man in charge — but his impact might already be felt if N’Golo Kanté finally agrees his contract extension.

According to the Telegraph, the “mutual appreciation” that Kanté and Pochettino share (as evidenced by Poch trying to sign Kanté at PSG) “could help” get this renewal many months in the making over the line. Let’s hope so: NG has just two months left on his current deal!

While we do need to trim the squad from its current unmanageable size, ideally Kanté won’t be part of those cuts, especially as he now seems to be back to being fit. And hopefully Pochettino won’t keep deploying him as an attacking midfielder, which Lampard keeps insisting on for some sort of Sarri-esque reason.

The report adds that Chelsea “hope that progress will be made this week” with regards to the Pochettino talks, so hopefully progress in the Kanté talks won’t be too far behind either.