James Ward-Prowse to Chelsea?! Mauricio Pochettino talks up West Ham midfielder amid need for ‘set-piece specialists’ at the club

Despite putting in the work with the players and coaching staff behind the scenes, Pochettino has been left ruing Chelsea's lack of a particularly skilled set-piece taker. He used Ward-Prowse, who has made a major impact at West Ham since joining last summer, as an example of the benefit.

Speaking at a press conference, Pochettino said: "We work a lot on set-pieces. We have a group of analysts for set-pieces. After that, it is about the quality of the player. It is about the takers. We don't have a specialist. Maybe Chilly [Ben Chilwell] is good in the delivery, but we don't have a specialist after that.

"If you want to be good in set-pieces, you need good takers. When you have good takers. It is not down to the work. We work similarly, but the problem is to have good takers. Look before at West Ham, and after. What changed? The taker is Ward-Prowse. For sure, you can work, like West Ham were working. But now, you add a player like him, you increase the percentage."

Many of the players that were seen as Chelsea's primary set-piece experts, such as Mason Mount, Hakim Ziyech and Marcos Alonso, have left the club since 2022. Meanwhile, Ward-Prowse, who actually played for Pochettino a decade ago at former club Southampton, is widely recognised as the best free-kick taker in the Premier League.

Ward-Prowse scored the 17th free-kick of his Premier League career against Pochettino's Chelsea in December 2023, putting him just one behind David Beckham's record tally in the competition. Since 2013, the midfielder also only trails Lionel Messi (32) for free-kick goals across Europe's top five leagues - but Ward-Prowse (13.4%) actually has a better success rate than the eight-time Ballon d'Or winner (9.4%), per Opta.

Chelsea's recent Premier League resurgence was ended by a crushing 4-1 defeat at the hands of Liverpool, leaving the Blues languishing in 10th place. They need to avoid defeat in Sunday's visit of Wolves to avoid being directly leapfrogged by their opponent and pushed back into the bottom half of the table.