Mauricio Pochettino should have stopped his Chelsea players doing one thing in the League Cup final against Liverpool on Sunday and perhaps if he did, they would have come away with a trophy.
Winning a trophy would have been absolutely huge for Pochettino and his young group of players in their first season together. They should have won this game, especially when it got to extra time and they were fully on top. It would have been a real triumph for the club, the manager, the players, and the fans collectively and you got the sense that they badly needed some silverware during what has been a very tense and turmoil couple of seasons under the new ownership group.
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But it wasn’t to be, and journalist Ben Jacobs believes that playing for penalties in extra time was a big mistake and Pochettino should have instructed his players not to do that.
In his exclusive and extensive Chelsea column for SPTC today, Jacobs said: “If Pochettino felt his players were playing for penalties he arguably should have stopped them. If he didn’t realise until after the game then what was said (or should have been said) at the end of 90 minutes to keep momentum going from the last 15 minutes of the game.”