Chelsea face an Everton side fighting for their Premier League lives at Stamford Bridge on Monday evening and head coach Mauricio Pochettino wants his team to show a willingness to compete that was missing in the 2-2 draw away to Sheffield United eight days ago.
“We have enough talent to win games,” he said. “But the most difficult thing in Premier League is another phase, when you don’t have the ball. When you don’t have the ball, you need to have the balls. Understand? To have the balls to recover the ball.”
Pochettino cited Oli McBurnie’s equaliser for the Blades in the third minute of added time as an example. “We need to all feel very disappointed because did you see the goal? We lose one challenge. We lose the second, the third and the four and the five. And then we concede in the same action. And that was the last minute of the game.
“It’s about having the capacity to go there and to say, ‘We are a winner, I’m going to win this challenge, I’m going to be strong, I’m going to defend, I’m going to not concede a goal.’ That is not more than capacity, you know, mentality, and all being together.”
Pochettino the player was not short of the required cojones, but he admitted that he cannot be on the pitch to set a personal example for his young players. “I think it’s about training and trying to show the way that we need to compete and then they need to deliver on the pitch,” he said. “It’s a process to be very competitive, very tough.
“We are in a project where 80, 90 percent of the players are young and maybe they need to grow all together. That’s why we are here, to help them in all this process, to become leaders.”
Raheem Sterling and Enzo Fernandez are both doubts for the game.
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