Pochettino gives surprise verdict of Chelsea performance vs Middlesbrough

Mauricio Pochettino feels Chelsea displayed good performance despite 1-0 defeat to Middlesbrough

Despite the 1-0 defeat to Middlesbrough, Chelsea boss Mauricio Pochettino was impressed by the players’ performance and labelled his side’s display as “good.”

This might have been shocking to the fans because of the way the Blues lost the game. But Pochettino is right, and we were on a far better side and should have secured a comfortable win.

However, it is meaningless to outperform your opponent and still lose the game because a strong performance is irrelevant if you are not scoring and this has transpired plenty of time with us this season.

The Blues were superior in every part of the game, and for the majority of the match, they camped out of Boro’s box but barely threatened to score goals, but Pochettino’s words had a sense of optimism that they would rally back in the second leg, (h/t Express) as he said:

“The performance was good. We cannot say anything about the attitude. We were punished for our mistakes. In football, that happens. It was disappointing because, if we assessed the performance, we were on the better side. But we didn’t score; we weren’t clinical.”

Pochettino has always been optimistic about the players, and he knows their performances were good, but we couldn’t put the ball in the back of the net, which was disappointing. It was obvious we were the better side and should have won the game by a large margin, given that Cole Palmer himself missed four top chances. Because if he had put it all in the net, he would have had four goals.

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It seems like it wasn’t his day, and the former Manchester City forward endured a poor game. Hopefully, he will have something to prove when we host the Michael Carrick side in the second leg, and given the deficit isn’t that big, we should be able to make a comeback in the returning fixture; otherwise, our potential chances of winning a trophy in our first season under Pochettino will come to an end.