Mauricio Pochettino was fuming after the match yesterday because his team had a late winner taken away by VAR. But overall he was pleased with how they did, and by the time it got to his Chelsea TV interview he was already looking forward to our next games, hoping we could maintain this form going forward.
Overall it’s a positive outlook, improved even further by the prospect of more players returning from injury. At the very end of his interview he was asked about this – we saw Reece James, Levi Colwill, Christopher Nkunku and Lesley Ugochukwu among those training again this week. Would any be back for our next games?
As always, Pochettino was very coy. “We will see” was his frustrating answer. But that smile on his face said a lot. Without getting hopes up, he looks like he knows he’s got more and more options coming online in the days to come.
You can see the coach speaking in the clip embedded here, with this quote coming after 2 minutes:
When it comes to Reece James and Christopher Nkunku, we don’t expect to see them even on the bench for a week or two. They’ve been out for so long that their fitness will need quite some time to build up.
Levi however has only missed a few weeks, and has likely been able to keep up a decent level of fitness during that period as it’s a toe injury. We could well see him named in a squad before too long, and that will give a huge amount of flexibility back to the squad given Colwill can play at left back or centre back. The experiments we saw last night with Marc Cucurella moving into midfield with a pseudo back 3 behind him could be taken to the next level with Colwill’s quality available.
The game of ye
The guys did well but the number 12 decided to rub the team intentionally. Because will the referee give a penalty if it was Aston Villa’s player who did that. Is very unfair same as Tothenham today.