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A Ligue 1 perspective on Chelsea’s manager search

Chelsea are on the hunt for a new manager and Frank Lampard has just been officially announced as interim until the end of the season, but we’ve seen one or two names with Ligue 1 connections linked with the full time job as well.

In terms of current managers in the French top flight, I’m not sure there’s an obvious candidate who’s suitable for a job of this stature. I think one who could jump to the Premier League at some point in the future is Will Still after his hugely impressive work with Reims. I could see him being one for West Ham if they decide to move on from David Moyes, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Paulo Fonseca, given his experience and given that he was very close in the past to taking the job at Tottenham, could be another good option for Premier League clubs, but I wouldn’t read too much into talk about Christophe Galtier being in contention at Spurs. Then again, now a lot of what happens with Spurs and Chelsea will be inter-linked, because a lot of the candidates will be the same for both posts.

I think there’d be a lot of logic to Mauricio Pochettino returning to the Premier League. He didn’t have great success at PSG, and I do think that spell ultimately has been fairly damaging for Pochettino and it makes his next move extremely important – there’d be risks associated with going back to Spurs, and also the role at Chelsea. If he suffers another setback in his career it could really derail things, so I can understand if there’s an element of temptation to wait and see what happens at Real Madrid, where he’s held in high esteem.

Zinedine Zidane’s name has come up a few times even if he doesn’t appear to be in contention right now, and with him my understanding is he’s tended to distance himself from jobs in the Premier League as he waits for a job with a club in France or with the French national team. He’d need to massively improve his English, and I think that’s one reason he’s hung a lot of hope on a return to France. I can understand Premier League clubs looking at him, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it never came to fruition. Time will tell, but there’s no strong link right now, certainly in comparison to someone like Pochettino, who is waiting for offers from England or Spain – two leagues he knows well, and…