Furious Mauricio Pochettino reacts to Chelsea draw, lack of hunger, two points dropped
Mauricio Pochettino was left furious after seeing his Chelsea team draw with Burnley at Stamford Bridge.
The Blues went ahead twice against the struggling Clarets, who were reduced to 10 men in the first-half. Cole Palmer’s double was cancelled out by goals from Josh Cullen and Dara O’Shea in SW6.
After the game, Pochettino was clearly incensed and you can tell by looking at his comments. You can read every word the Argentine had to say in our full transcript below.
You must be disappointed. That’s two points dropped…
“Agreed. Very disappointed in the way that in the second-half we managed or deal with the situation. We are a team that, when we play in possession and play forward, we are able to create too many chances, maybe not to score all the chances we created. We need to improve our percentage in the game.
“After today, we didn’t show the capacity, the energy, the anger. Not the minimum to compete in the Premier League. In the defensive phase we concede too much. That is why I am so upset and disappointed. It’s more here [in your heart] and here [in your head] than in your legs to be strong like a group, to be strong like a team. That is sometimes the circumstance for different reasons we are so slow evolving in this area.
“That is the key today. It’s not to find excuses. The team played well, yes, we have energy, yes, we go forward, yes, but afterwards when we don’t have the ball we don’t have the same energy.
“Agreed. Very disappointed in the way that in the second-half we managed or deal with the situation. We are a team that, when we play in possession and play forward, we are able to create too many chances, maybe not to score all the chances we created. We need to improve our percentage in the game.
“After today, we didn’t show the capacity, the energy, the anger. Not the minimum to compete in the Premier League. In the defensive phase we concede too much. That is why I am so upset and disappointed. It’s more here [in your heart] and here [in your head] than in your legs to be strong like a group, to be strong like a team. That is sometimes the circumstance for different reasons we are so slow evolving in this area.
“That is the key today. It’s not to find excuses. The team played well, yes, we have energy, yes, we go forward, yes, but afterwards when we don’t have the ball we don’t have the same energy.
“Sorry, but I am not with the performance when we don’t have the ball. If we are able to create chances in the way we did and have the capacity to move and find all the different ways to penetrate a team that play with a block very deep. They are a very physical team, we need to be strong also and have the capacity to recover the ball too much.
“Remember the first-half, the keeper played quick into action and the action finished into our last third, into the box. That is to have hunger, to compete. Sorry for my speech but it is difficult to accept not to win a game because it’s a must-win game to attack a different position.
“Yes, we need to accept that and recover the situation. On Thursday we have another game here and we need to be with all the energy to be competitive and clear our head now.”
It seems like you’re not defending your team…
“I am defending my team. I am describing the situation. If you ask me am I kidding someone? No. We are part of the problems. It’s to blame everyone.”
Is this the worst you’ve seen in terms of those aspects?
“Look at the way we concede the first goal. With one [player] less, they played easily and then we conceded. That is about to realise, we need to compete, it’s different when you play football. But after we need to increase our work level.
“It’s not to blame the players. It’s to blame everyone because maybe we need to be a bit tougher when we have the players. We had only one day to prepare because of different circumstances with the national team.
“We need to be a team with better communication and to be more competitive. I am describing what happened a few minutes before.”
Are you cancelling days off?
“It’s not about cancelling days off. They need to realise that we are missing something. That is why we are where we are. Today it is so clear that when we don’t have the ball we don’t increase our level and didn’t have the capacity to recover the ball back and allow them to transition so easily from one area to another.”
Why do you think all those qualities are missing?
“You are listening to me, no? We miss energy, we miss the capacity to deal with the situation, we miss communication in between us. We remember after [the defeat to] Wolverhampton, the team was celebrating every tackle and things like this that increases our level, but today we were not feeling the same.
“Maybe for a different reason, of course. We have clear ideas on where we need to improve. That is fact. That is the reality. We cannot analyse the game in a different way, we cannot analyse different things, that is the key. We need to improve if we want to be better.”
