Mauricio Pochettino tells Chelsea players to grow up after Aston Villa loss
Mauricio Pochettino’s nightmare as a Chelsea manager continues and Sunday’s 1-0 loss to Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge send the Argentina’s side to three games without scoring.
Chelsea failed to score in loss to Nottingham Forest and in games against Bournemouth and Aston Villa.
Chelsea were beaten 1-0 at home by Villa last Sunday (24th September, 2023). Chelsea continue to find solutions to their poor performances and Mauricio Pochettino has identified one of the challenges leading to Chelsea’s poor run of results.
Pochettino who has led the London side to 14th position on the Premier League table said Chelsea need to grow up as a team.
“We need to grow up as a team, not only in an individual way. A player like Nicolas is so young and is feeling his way into the Premier League and learning.
“He needs time, and in this type of game we are competing and want to win. But the players, when they are young, need to learn with experience and when they make a mistake.
“That is why we feel disappointed because we are paying too many situations like this. Things like this is another small detail and, in the end, we are losing the game. We are in a situation we need to change as soon as possible.
“It is the players’ responsibility. We cannot blame the VAR or the referee. In this situation, we need to act different in a different way. I’m not going to blame or say anything against Malo Gusto because, sometimes, some situations happen in football. This type of situation affected the game and the team in a negative way.
“It’s about learning, it is all a process. We are a young team that is in a process, they need to learn altogether. It’s difficult to talk about positives when you lose but I think we need to talk about positive things.
“No doubt in time, the team is going to perform, but we cannot hide the situation that disappoints all of the fans, the club as well as us and the players.”
Chelsea are the league’s worst underperformers relative to their expected goals tally, having drawn a blank in consecutive games against Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth and now Aston Villa.
Only Burnley and Luton have scored fewer league goals this season, while even dating back to last season the Blues have netted only 14 times in their last 16 games.
Work,” said Pochettino on how to improve their fortunes in the final third. “Giving trust and then confidence. We have the squad we have, we cannot change anything.
“The owners feel disappointed, they are excited to build a project so they are disappointed, but they need to support the plan.
“We will try to build confidence and give them all the support they need because they need to perform on the pitch. The performance is good, I’m not going to say it’s excellent, but we are missing being clinical in front of goal.
“We need to keep going and working. I cannot find another solution, we will start again tomorrow to build the confidence and trust and hope we can score on Wednesday.”
Chelsea will take on Brighton in the EFL Cup om Wednesday.
