Mauricio Pochettino names the thing to see “differently” in his team tonight | OneFootball

Mauricio Pochettino has been speaking to the media this evening ahead of our game against Tottenham, and he has pointed to one thing he expects to see improvement in from his team compared to the weekend’s game against Aston Villa.

That match saw the Blues concede a goal within 5 minutes for the second time in a week, and while they did play very well in the second half, the slow start cost them. Pochettino doesn’t want to see that today. In fact, he wants the opposite:

“Every game is completely different. We had some luck in the game back there [vs Spurs] in November. Today is going to be different in different circumstances and we want to put energy from the beginning,” the manager explained.

“”We want to approach it differently from the last few games. Against Aston Villa, I think we were all disappointed in the way we started.”

It should be a lot easier to pull that off at home in front of an urgent crowd, but it’s still a tall task.

Mauricio Pochettino speaks to the media after VAR incident.

A chance for revenge – but not for Chelsea

Spurs were in brilliant form when we met back in November. It seems crazy now, but they were being spoken about as a potential title contender. That game seemed to break them a little, and they also lost two key players to injury. The stats of before and after that night are stark.

But Pochettino is right. We had plenty of luck that night, both in terms of the opposition players getting injured, and in terms of them picking up stupid red cards. We can’t expect to get that sort of luck again tonight.

Starting well will of course be key. But it’s going to have to be a pretty complete performance, and there’s no experience on the bench to help later on.