“He has just been terrible lately and it’s costing his team. His ability to finish has diminished at an alarming rate lately and the best place for him now is the bench. It feels like he’s playing for his high wages” – Chelsea Manager Mauricio Pochettino claims that a Chelsea star is an absolute ‘joke’ to his former self

West Londoners had 72% of the ball in Tuesday’s game and 18 shots on goal compared to Boro’s six. However, a clever move just before halftime ended with Hayden Hackney scoring to put the home team ahead.

Cole Palmer missed three great chances in the first half, but Middlesbrough guarded brilliantly and Chelsea had a lot less of the second half’s chances.

Chelsea’s season has been marked by a lack of clinical skill in front of goal. Pochettino was unhappy that his team couldn’t turn their control into goals, but he was mostly happy with the performance and sure that they could turn the tie around at Stamford Bridge in two weeks.

He told Sky Sports afterward, “I think today the approach was good; we can’t say anything about the attitude.”

We made some mistakes in the first half, which is why I think they had chances to score. After that, they were so energetic and tough.

“They played with a really deep block, in transition, and on the counterattack.” It was hard for us to get this block apart.

Of course, that’s football—we had a lot of chances to score but didn’t. I’m really upset, but this is only the first half of the match; we have another 90 minutes at Stamford Bridge coming up. I believe we should have a good attitude.

‘I think it’s how we fight,’ Pochettino said when asked what he thought about Chelsea’s spending this season. We did some wrong things and got in trouble for them. In sports, that does happen.

“All you can do is be tough and keep going.” But I’m unhappy because I think we played better and had more clear chances.

“But we didn’t score and we weren’t clinical—and that’s been a problem all season; I think it’s happened a lot after six months.” We lost a lot of games because we weren’t precise enough.

“Sometimes we don’t have the killer instinct to score.” They are making too many chances for us to score, but we are not taking advantage of them. In this kind of game, it’s hard to win if you don’t score.

At the end of the game, Chelsea fans who were travelling booed the players. Thiago Silva went over to the away end to try to calm them down, and Pochettino thinks the fans had every right to be upset.

When asked about what happened at full-time, he said, “I did not see, I did not see what was going on there.” There is nothing I can say about that other than, “Of course, we know that makes our fans sad, but there are still 90 minutes to play.”