Mauricio Pochettino ended his post-match press conference at Stamford Bridge with an impassioned closing address, attempting to spread some positivity to Chelsea supporters via the mass of dictaphones, cameras and assembled journalists.
“For a second time in Wembley, in the Carabao Cup and FA Cup,” he said after Chelsea’s 4-2 win over Leicester City. “That is always… when I arrived in England, at Southampton we always said, ‘We need to go to Wembley’. At Tottenham (we said), ‘We need to go to Wembley’.
“And now look, in nine months in two different competitions we got to Wembley. We need to enjoy and we need to trust more.”
There was precious little evidence of either in the stands during an FA Cup quarter-final that proved far more dramatic and dangerous than it ought to have been.
Chelsea showed too much Premier League quality for Championship promotion hopefuls Leicester to handle — but did so in a manner that undermined Pochettino and reminded everyone that this is not, as presently constructed, a serious team.
Leicester played an obligingly open game at Stamford Bridge, gifting the home side ample opportunity to counterattack into a sea of open space; Marc Cucurella opened the scoring in the 13th minute by running harder than everyone else from one box to the other and tapping in Nicolas Jackson’s smart low cross at the back post.
In the 25th minute Abdul Fatawu’s rash challenge in his own box gifted Chelsea a chance to put the tie to bed from the penalty spot. Pochettino has never set a penalty-taking hierarchy in stone, simply insisting that the player who feels most confident should assume the responsibility. It is how Cole Palmer got the job against Burnley in October.
Given that Palmer has not missed a penalty in his professional career and carries himself like the most confident man at Chelsea, it is hard to imagine how Raheem Sterling (previous career record: eight attempts, four goals, four misses) could have made a compelling case — but he is a more senior player, a friend and someone Palmer regarded as a mentor at Manchester City.
Disasi and Sterling both endured mixed afternoons (Mike Hewitt/Getty Images)
Such moments can happen in the absence of a clear structure. Sterling’s subsequent limp miss transformed what could have been a routine home win into a live cup tie and personal psychodrama in a hostile Stamford Bridge. Pochettino’s instinct to protect both of his players afterwards was unsurprising and laudable, but the fact that it happened made him look weak.
“You know very well that it’s Cole (who takes the penalties), but Cole gave the ball to Raheem,” Chelsea’s head coach said. “They have a very good relationship, they both came from Manchester City, and when Raheem asked for the ball to take the penalty Cole gave him the ball. That is not a problem. Cole can miss, Raheem can miss.
“The decision is there and I’m always going to support the decision of my players on the pitch. That is about growing and maturing, and I’m always happy with their decision.”
Some of the other Chelsea decisions against Leicester were even harder for Pochettino to defend; this was, to any dispassionate observer, one of the funniest (though by no means the worst) performances produced by any Premier League team in recent memory.
Sterling and Mykhailo Mudryk took turns to fire the ball at each other in the Leicester box. Robert Sanchez courted calamity with almost every touch, and his positioning was questionable when Axel Disasi scored the own goal of the season with an overhit back pass in the 51st minute. It gave Leicester life before they had even registered their only shot on target: Stephy Mavididi’s excellent curled equaliser in the 62nd minute.
As good of an own goal as you’ll see.
Axel Disasi gets Leicester City back into the game.#CHELEI | #CFC
🎥 @BBCSport pic.twitter.com/aOP2zvexuo
— The Athletic | Football (@TheAthleticFC) March 17, 2024
The collective spirit of this Chelsea team is not in question. Nor is their ability to produce bursts of superb, incisive football like the sequence that reduced Leicester to 10 men in the 73rd minute, or the two spectacular goals from substitutes Carney Chukwuemeka and Noni Madueke that broke their resistance in added time.
One moment of misplaced deference aside, Palmer remains joyously impervious to the nonsense that too often transpires around him in this Chelsea team. As has become his trademark, he was the one who provided the inspiration in the final third when Pochettino needed it most, doubling Chelsea’s lead on the stroke of half-time and then creating Chukwuemeka’s winner with a sublime back heel.
But beyond him and between Chelsea’s two scoring bursts, the toxicity bubbled up again. Sterling was roundly booed after capping a Roberto Carlos-style run-up with an astonishingly bad free kick. Pochettino was assailed by chants of, “You don’t know what you’re doing” when he decided to take off Mudryk rather than Stamford Bridge’s designated villain for Chukwuemeka. “We want to create a better atmosphere, I cannot lie,” the Argentinian admitted.
It is hard to see that happening when the perspective of Chelsea’s players and staff is so fundamentally different to that of the supporters. For most of this century, getting to Wembley has been viewed as a means to an end, not the end itself. Pochettino’s claim that an FA Cup semi-final appearance should constitute a feather in the cap is unlikely to play well.
Chelsea have booked their return passage to English football’s biggest stage. Pochettino is right when he points out that for a young team, that is not nothing — but this victory offered no fresh reason to believe they can avenge an agonising Carabao Cup final loss, and no new cause for their FA Cup semi-final opponents, Manchester City, to fear them in the slightest.
GO DEEPER
What now, Graham Potter?
(Top photo: Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)
