Mauricio Pochettino may be on the chopping block, but time and again, he has shown that he is a good coach. The consistency from his team is what is lacking but on Sunday that side of them did not show.
Chelsea welcomed their East London neighbours West Ham United to Stamford Bridge on Sunday afternoon and thrashed them mercilessly. Nicolas Jackson got two goals to continue his improved form while Cole Palmer added another league goal to his tally as he continues to chase down Erling Haaland for the Premier League Golden Boot.
Noni Madueke also performed brilliantly as did Chelsea’s defence, who shut down every attempt by West Ham to break forward.
The Argentine manager cut a proud figure in the post-match arena with the Chelsea media team and all the other journalists from various broadcast channels. He described the team’s performance as fantastic and expressed hope that they finish as strongly as they did in their last two games of the season.
“I am so pleased, so happy. It continues the same feelings from Thursday and keeps up the momentum,” the former Tottenham Hotspur manager said. “The performance was fantastic in every aspect and the players deserve big credit to play again after a few days at this level. Massive credit to them.”
Madueke’s performance was especially great to witness, especially after he let go of a goalscoring opportunity to lay it off for Jackson, whose confidence took a hit for a while and is slowly returning. Pochettino stated that the player’s action is indicative of the growth in his side.
“Noni’s assist to Jackson shows that we have learned and we are smart. The penalty situation against Everton, we received lots of criticism, but a young team always needs to make mistakes and feel the situations to improve. If we are able to improve, it is because we are smart and intelligent people.
“Today was great. It was a great action from Noni to show how the group are starting to believe and feel between them.
“It is always a process that takes time. You never know if it is going to take one month, six months or a year. The most important thing is they are starting to set the principles to feel and live like a group of players to create those links to compete.
“I am so pleased about that because we are a part of the process to help them grow and mature and to improve in every aspect. It is the first step, a massive step, but it is a step that we wanted to reach. From there, it is to involve the other aspects, like tactical evolutions and different things.
“We can improve from there but without the principles or without the things we have started to show, being competitive in this way, it is impossible to evolve in another aspect.”
