Pochettino reflects after his team faced a defeat against the Red Devils

Mauricio Pochettino blamed Chelsea's defeat to Manchester United because his players were tired. Still, he admitted that this was not the reason because his team failed to match the opponent's energy and aggressiveness. The Blues had to bite their fingers after losing when they visited Old Trafford stadium to face Man Utd in the match in Week 15 of the 2023/24 Premier League where they lost 1-2 to Host on Wednesday. Chelsea, who had several golden opportunities, were only able to use one opportunity to score a goal, namely through Cole Palmer in the 45th minute. Meanwhile, the home team sealed the win through two goals from Scott McTominay in the 19th and 69th minutes.

With this defeat, Reece James and teammates are in 10th place with 19 points. Meanwhile, the Red Devils are in sixth place with 27 points in the Premier League standings. The Pensioners have now recorded six defeats, but Pochettino, speaking in his post-match press conference, said he was not worried about the defeat.

The 51-year-old head coach said "he is not worried because there are too many situations that need to be explained why we didn't perform well," he told Sky Sports. "The opposing team deserved the win. It was tough at the start. They showed a lot of energy." The Blues currently have a long list of injured players with Romeo Lavia, Christopher Nkunku, Trevoh Chalobah and Ben Chilwell, who is currently sidelined.

But Pochettino turned his attention to their opponents, claiming that Man United had a longer break between games, following their 1-0 defeat to Newcastle. "Man Utd has one more day to prepare, and we have a lot of young players on the bench. That's not an excuse, but that's the reality," said the Argentinian coach.

"I'm not disappointed because we gave everything but didn't match their energy or aggressiveness. We created chances, maybe enough to make the game a draw." The former PSG coach continued that according to him, the match against Brighton with 10 players and their relatively short trip to Manchester drained his team's energy. "Playing Brighton with one less player for a long time probably affected the energy, and we had to recover too many players from injury, to have different options and be more competitive," he said.

"That's not an excuse, it's just that they were better. In what percentage? Maybe 10%, but we must focus, recover the players and prepare for Sunday. "We were missing players, we played with almost the same players against Brighton, and we were short of players for 60 minutes."