While they have spent a lot of money since, the Blues are still midtable under Mauricio Pochettino this term.
Speaking to the Unfiltered podcast, he said: I said it quite a lot when I was there, and people threw it back at me. I was like, 'Standards have not been good enough here'. You have to have a level of standards to be a top club.
Forget about the tactics of the layer on top; things below have to be right to perform, and I didn't see it there. Now, I think in the summer, to be fair, players moved on, some rightfully so for them and for the club, and new players came in.
So, I think that probably would have freshened up the feel in pre-season for the new manager... But in my opinion, it was going to be a challenge again to keep moving forward quickly like people would expect, and that's proven to be the case."