Mauricio Pochettino, the Chelsea Manager is clutching at straws to explain the 5-0 humiliation his team suffered on Tuesday night at the hands of table topping Arsenal.
The Argentine is now blaming his players for giving up during the London derby.
The 5-0 defeat was the heaviest ever defeat inflicted on Chelsea by Arsenal and it just encapsulated their extremely poor season.
Goals from Leandro Trossard and two goals each from Ben White and Kai Havertz completed the rout of the former two times Champions League winning Chelsea.
Pochettino said Chelsea were just not in the game. In his words:
“It is impossible to see Saturday at Wembley, a fantastic performance, competing really well against Manchester City, one of the best in the world, and then today. You can lose a game, and Arsenal are fighting for the Premier League, but the way we competed three days ago and today, there is no excuse.”
However, there is no shirking away from the blame. Both Pochettino and the entire Chelsea team are entirely to blame.
Pochettino took a really expensive gamble to bench the reliable Thiago Silver, and put the inexperienced pair of Benoit Badiashile and Axel Disasi in the central defence.
That was a terrible error as the pair were completely overrun by the rampaging Arsenal attack.
Nicholas Jackson, the Chelsea striker was as usual very poor. There must be questions now on how he still starts for Chelsea after consistently showing and doing nothing that strikers do upfront, score goals.
This is squarely on Pochettino as it was a completely avoidable humiliation.
Chelsea management must start thinking of the next steps and decisions to make as this team is not a Premier League ready team. Those decisions will surely involve the future stay of Mauricio Pochettino and many of the first team players.
