Chelsea head coach Mauricio Pochettino has said that his team must be more ‘clinical’ and ‘nasty’ after a disappointing London derby defeat against Brentford.
Pochettino refused to lay out any excuses after the game – instead, he assured the fans that his squad are a work in process and that they still have plenty of things to work on from a mental perspective.
In the game against the Bees, the Blues sunk to a 2-0 defeat at Stamford Bridge – Ethan Pinnock opened the scoring for Brentford, with Bryan Mbeumo doubling their lead at the death.
What did Chelsea Mauricio Pochettino say after the game?
Speaking on BBC Sport, Pochettino said: “I’m really disappointed, because the game reflects the performance [of Chelsea]. But I think we have been talking a lot, from the beginning of the season, about being nastier in the [final] third and being clinical.
“I think it was the first or second chance in the second half where we need to be more nasty and more clinical, you know? And be strong. That is disappointing because I think we dominated, we created chances, but if you don’t score, the confidence is going down and that was happening in the second half.
“It’s normal that we need to work on this [scoring chances] and try to change. The team, when that happens [failing to take chances], is affected. We need to try to change this from happening. In the first half, we allowed them to go forward – this is our fault, it is not about blaming one [player], we need to be more nasty. We need to be more clinical.
What did Pochettino say about the difficulty of the job?
On whether he knew if the Chelsea job would be this difficult or not, Pochettino replied: “Yeah, but this is a process. We need time and belief to keep going, because the most difficult thing is to create belief. You can see in different weeks and different where we are sometimes not playing well but we still win.
“But that is because you have the real trust, the real belief – and it is a very young group [of players] who need to improve in this area. More than tactically, we need to build our mentality and trust.”