Chelsea are making gruelling progress under Mauricio Pochettino - but don't expect to see the Blues at their best until next season

Chelsea's injury woes this season have been well-documented. The Blues are one of a host of clubs to have suffered an unprecedented injury crisis, a potential after-effect of the mid-season 2022 World Cup, and Pochettino has had to deal with the fallout.

Of course, the world's smallest violin will soundtrack any sympathy for the big-spending west Londoners, but almost six months into the campaign, the Argentine tactician has still never had his strongest possible line-up available to him.

Summer arrival Christopher Nkunku - on whom so much responsibility was placed when Chelsea paid £52 million ($66m) for him before declining to sign a recognised striker - effectively missed the first half of the campaign, while fellow signing Romeo Lavia has mustered just a single 32-minute appearance sandwiched between two injury problems. Never has the phrase 'they will feel like a new signing' been more apt once they return.

Key defenders Reece James, Wesley Fofana and Marc Cucurella are all long-term absentees, too, while Ben Chilwell has only just made a return from his latest hamstring problem, and Malo Gusto has had his share of problems, too.

That endless injury list has contributed to the enduring state of flux within the walls of Cobham after an unprecedented summer of upheaval. Chelsea's newly-appointed decision-makers justifiably set out to undertake an overhaul of the squad at the end of the dire 2022-23 campaign. They completed their clear-out with ruthless efficiency as some 21 players departed, while a world-record £450m ($571m) was splurged on 11 new arrivals - taking the club's spending under Boehly-Clearlake's stewardship beyond £1 billion ($1.23bn).

The £200m ($254m) raised through player sales will be invaluable in the struggle to fall in line with Financial Fair Play (FFP), but there is a sense that Pochettino was left to piece things together in the aftermath having started work too late to contribute to the summer transfer strategy, which was led by co-sporting directors Laurence Stewart and Paul Winstanley.

With the injury crisis making their transition gruellingly slow, the dust is only just beginning to settle as the new-look squad takes shape.

And yet, despite all of those ins and outs, there is still an air of incompleteness. It's the worst-kept secret in football that Chelsea are lacking a proven goal-scorer to spearhead their attack, while there is an alarming lack of depth in central midfield behind starters Conor Gallagher, Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo.

When everyone is fully fit, the defence is well stocked, but the goalkeeper position has been a problem ever since Thibaut Courtois left for Real Madrid in 2018, with neither Kepa Arrizabalaga nor Robert Sanchez the long-term solution, while Djordje Petrovic is unproven at the highest level.

You can probably hear that tiny violin sounding in the distance again, but for Chelsea's squad to be the finished article, they arguably need to make three more targeted signings to address their deficiencies.

In the face of that relative adversity, Pochettino has actually extracted some vastly improved performances from his players as he fights to shake of the residual malaise of last season. Although they could certainly be more clinical, the Blues have just about overcome their collective goal-shyness, and there are the early signs that the manager is imprinting his footballing philosophy on his players.

Chelsea dearly lacked any sort of identity throughout a nightmarish 2022-23, but the hallmarks of the manager's high-intensity, possession-based, front-footed approach have shone through intermittently, with deadline-day signing Cole Palmer emerging as a particularly transformative presence in Chelsea's attack.

However, that incremental overall improvement has been interspersed with some woeful performances reminiscent of the previous campaign, and there is evidently some way to go before we see this team consistently at its best.

Indeed, the manager himself is under no illusions as to the task at hand, and indeed he is the first to acknowledge that the first half of the season was not good enough by Chelsea's high standards in the modern era - but he is adamant injuries are a mitigating factor.

"We’re so far away [from our target],” he said recently. "Our target was to be on the top, even if no one believed us. But in the circumstance, we are fighting for different things. We are Chelsea, because our history demands us to be at the top.

"At the moment, being realistic, we need to increase the way that we compete if we want to win more games. We need to compete better. I think the performance from the beginning of the season has not been bad. We can say it’s very good. But in terms of competing, we are in the bottom. That’s why we are not in a better position in the table.

"In football you need to have the knowledge, the quality, the set-up. But at some point in football, in 90 minutes, you need to compete. You need to show in the way you play football. We need to improve there, and that’s about having all the players (fit), spending time with them together."

Pochettino knows he has been dealt a rough hand in his brief time at the helm at Stamford Bridge (cue that tiny violin), but one of the most encouraging aspects of his tenure has been his brutal honesty and evident determination to make a success of his reign.

Graham Potter struggled to endear himself to the Chelsea fanbase in his brief, ill-fated tenure, and that was thanks in no small part to a perceived lack of grit and nasty edge. His full-time successor seems to be striking the right balance and is clearly emotionally invested in the project. From his perspective, success is just 'a matter of time'.

"We are suffering after five, six months, but that is a challenge," he said in December. "I think it's a very good thing for us, even if I am so upset. I feel really bad because we want to be in a different position, but that is the challenge we are never going to give up on. We are going to fight.

"The challenge is massive but I really believe that we can succeed, it is a matter of time. Of course, that is the most difficult thing in football, to keep believing when you do not get the results that you want. We will succeed for sure, you will see. Maybe today you can say 'this guy is crazy,' but I am not crazy. I know what I am doing."