‘Easy’: Ashley Cole thinks Pochettino actually helped West Ham by using £100,000-a-week Chelsea player

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Ashley Cole thinks Mauricio Pochettino made life easy for West Ham against Chelsea after swapping Carney Chukwuemeka for Mykhailo Mudryk.

The 42-year-old made the comments when speaking on Sky Sports after the 90 minutes had ended.

So, what did Ashley Cole say about Mauricio Pochettino and Mykhailo Mudryk? Let’s take a look…

What’s the story?

Well, the Chelsea legend felt West Ham were helped by the Ukraine international replacing Carney Chukwuemeka, after the England Under-21 international suffered an injury.

The 19-year-old scored Chelsea’s equaliser, and looked to be one of Pochettino’s brightest sparks until he was forced out of the game.

At the half-time interval, Mudryk replaced Chukwuemeka, which is when Cole felt things began to get a little bit too simple for West Ham.

The Sky Sports pundit said: “Maybe the substitution (Chukwuemeka off, Mudryk on) caused an issue. It was all then too easy for West Ham.”

Make no mistake about it, the dynamic of the game changed completely after Pochettino was forced into substituting the £100,000-a-week forward onto the pitch.

Mudryk stretched West Ham and frequently delivered crosses into the box, although that actually suited West Ham, who are a very physical team.

Chukwuemeka was causing problems by cutting inside and ghosting into dangerous areas, so perhaps this is one for Pochettino to learn from in terms of player profiles affecting certain matches.

Chelsea vs West Ham showed what Pochettino needs before deadline day

In our view, today’s defeat proved that Pochettino needs a different type of forward at Chelsea before transfer deadline day.

Chukwuemeka is a vastly different attacker to Mudryk – as aforesaid, he caused problems inside of West Ham’s full-backs, whereas the Ukrainian often ran on the outside of them.

The game changed completely without Chukwuemeka, so perhaps Pochettino needs to think about signing another inverted forward who can do what the England Under-21 international can when he’s unavailable.