MAURICIO Pochettino said the 2-0 win over his former club Tottenham Hotspur at Stamford Bridge on Thursday night is the happiest he has been after a game this season.
Trevoh Chalobah headed in Conor Gallagher’s free-kick in the 24th minute and in the 71st minute Nicolas Jackson headed in after Cole Palmer’s free-kick had struck the crossbar.
The Blues moved up to eighth, three points off Manchester United in sixth.
“Maybe I don’t know if it’s the best game but it is the most happy I’ve been after,” Pochettino said. “In the way that we play, the way we compete, that is what we wanted from the beginning of the season, what we want to apply to the team.
“Today, we were so competitive. In this way, we can grow, we can do better and we can improve in the areas.
“[Chalobah and Gallagher] were fantastic, of course. Always we talk about the identity of the clubs, players that grow in the club, came through the academy system. They have the capacity in this type of game to give a little bit more because it’s emotional.
“But that doesn’t mean the players that arrive away from the academy do not feel the same. You can see Thiago [Silva] how he feels, how emotional he is, how you can build this bond with your team. But in this case, they were fantastic. The whole team were fantastic but Trevoh and Conor were amazing.”
“We were talking a lot with Jesus [Perez], they are a group of players that didn’t suffer an injury and you can see today they can work, the work-rate. It is true it was a little bit unlucky at the beginning of the season that we suffered, for different reasons, some different circumstances. We were never able to work with the whole team in the way that we had the capacity to work.
“It is not easy to create a competitive group of players that can go to the pitch 100 per cent in their best form. Today, in the last few weeks, we are trying to find this balance. People are starting to realise it is a process, the time that you need.
“Noni Madueke today, for me, unbelievable. If you analyse him from the start of the season, all the conversations and meetings, clips and videos, things like this. He was capable today of doing a fantastic job with the ball – of course, he is an offensive player – but without the ball he is doing a fantastic job helping Alfie [Gilchrist] defend. That is what we need for the future, to build this competitive spirit.”
Spurs have repeatedly been linked with a move for Gallagher.
Pochettino said: “I am not involved. I do not know nothing.
“You can see, my starting XI, the whole season he has always been there, in all of the circumstances he is always there. I am not involved in the decision. It is a situation they need to fix between the club and the player.”
Meanwhile, Tottenham boss Ange Postecoglou was tetchy after the defeat, a third in a row.
“It wasn’t good enough and I have to take responsibility for that, it is on me. I am the manager and I am the one putting them out there and it was not good enough,” Postecoglou said.
“When we put in a performance like we did in the first half it meant my message wasn’t getting through.”
When asked what the message was, he replied:”Come on mate, we didn’t play well, do you want me to write you a dossier of where it went wrong?
“I feel like we’ve lost a bit of belief and conviction in our football and that is on me to change that.
“It wasn’t about conceding the [first] goal, it was our approach to playing football and we were nowhere near good enough. That is on me.
“We’ve been in a bit of a grind for a while now, that is part of our challenge and part of our growth. We have to go out there and perform and sometimes you have to grind out. We were poor today.”
Postecoglou added:”I don’t now how to answer these questions. We were poor today, what is the point of thinking about anything else? My responsibility is to make sure we play better next time.”
