Mauricio Pochettino was quick to underline the performance of his whole team in the 4-1 win away at Burnley, believing it came at a vital time for our confidence as he looks to continue improving over the international break.
Chelsea put in a brilliant second-half performance at Turf Moor to run out comfortable 4-1 winners against Burnley, making it three wins in a row while picking up back-to-back Premier League victories for the first time this season.
Much of that was inspired by an impressive display from Raheem Sterling, who had a hand in all four of our goals, scoring one himself in addition to pressuring Ameen Al Dakhil to put into his own net, being fouled for Cole Palmer’s penalty and providing the cross which led to Nicolas Jackson’s final strike.
However, when questioned about Sterling’s performance, Mauricio Pochettino was quick to give the credit to the whole team, underlining what he believes was an important win to go into the international break on a high.
‘All the players try to play well and today he was well, he was involved in the goals and I am so happy for him and so happy for the team,’ said Pochettino.
‘The team was good, the performance was fantastic, I think they deserve the whole credit. We are so happy for them and go into the international break with a different feeling than the last break.
‘We will spend it trying to improve players. Try to recover players from injury. We have two weeks which we are going to spend working at the training ground. Of course it’s a different mood to the break last month because to go into it with a victory is much better. But we will keep pushing and working hard to try to be better next month.’
Pochettino felt the timing of our equaliser shortly before half-time was important to our comeback after conceding an early goal…
‘When you concede first and then you need to create the opening, always you feel proud when you achieve that, you earn that. The team was playing well and we conceded from a situation where we were creating the chances, which was completely unfair.
‘But the team was really good. We were solid in the whole team and we scored before the end of the first half. That helps a little bit for your belief in the second half.’
Most importantly, our head coach sees signs that the team is starting to gel, and is confident performances will only improve as more players return from injury…
‘When we lost some games against Nottingham Forest and West Ham, we were building as a team. We are young group now, we are a young team. When you have some young players and some experienced players playing together that doesn’t happen in a matter of seconds, it’s about a matter of time.
‘We were performing very well, but of course the players knew very well they needed to improve to add to the team better quality. That was only with time, beginning to know each other and to perform.
‘We are recovering players now because we suffered too many issues, which also helps the team to increase the level. The competition is going to be tough and it’s going to be tough for me to pick the team, but that is a thing that I love to do. I hope that happens soon.
‘Always in football it’s about performance and the players need to feel that they deserve to play. If we want to be consistent and fight for big things we need to be consistent every single game.
‘That is going to need good competition between them. We have a very talented squad, but at the moment for different reasons we could not used all the potential of the squad. Bad luck in some situations, but I think with time we are going to be in the position we want to be in.
‘When the players are all fit it’s going to be massive competition and it’s going to be good for the team to keep the level that we need if we want to fight for big things.’
