Chelsea season on the line as Mauricio Pochettino strives for crucial cup optimism

Mauricio Pochettino has rarely tried to conceal his misgivings about England’s domestic cup competitions, but Chelsea’s season now depends on both.

On Tuesday, the Blues face Middlesbrough in the second leg of their Carabao Cup semi-final, before Friday’s meeting with Aston Villa in the fourth round of the FA Cup.

Chelsea have home advantage in both ties, but Championship side Boro come to Stamford Bridge with a 1-0 lead from the first leg, while Villa are already out of sight in the League, so Pochettino’s side can hardly count on safe passage in either game.

Lose both and Chelsea’s season would be as good as over by the halfway point for a second year running, leaving Pochettino’s stuttering project on the brink.

But continue their recent uptick — wins over Fulham, Luton and Crystal Palace in the League — with two more, and Chelsea will be able to look ahead with renewed optimism: a day out a Wembley against Fulham or Liverpool, an FA Cup run and, perhaps, a push for Europe.

At Tottenham, Pochettino was dismissive of the significance of the domestic cups, memorably saying that winning them “only builds your ego” after Spurs were knocked out of both competitions in the space of four days at this stage of the 2018-19 season.

For the Argentinian, lifting a cup was a nice bonus but would do little to turn his young squad into real winners and distracted from securing top-four football and potentially challenging to win the League and Champions League, which he described as “the real trophies”.

Today, the 51-year-old is a different coach — more experienced, perhaps more pragmatic — and his view might have changed. Whatever the case, the bottom line is that this iteration of Chelsea are nowhere near winning the title and are not going to gatecrash the top-four or -five this season, leaving Pochettino needing to embrace the competitions he once dismissed.

Chelsea fans are used to targeting bigger prizes, but lifting the Carabao Cup would change the outlook of Chelsea’s so-far underwhelming first season under Pochettino, endearing the manager and this new group of players to the fanbase and bringing the squad together.

“It is really important, because it is a possibility to win a title and the effect is to maybe reduce a little bit the pressure on some players,” the head coach said.

Lifting the trophy would also buy crucial time for Pochettino, just as Arsenal’s FA Cup victory in 2020 left Mikel Arteta with credit in the bank, and give fans reason to crow, given his five-and-a-half seasons of near-misses with trophy-shy Spurs. “It is a good pressure,” Pochettino added. “I like this kind of challenge. We want to be in [this] situation and play in a semi-final.”

Pochettino’s scepticism of the competitions at Spurs occasionally manifested in questionable team selections and insipid performances in the biggest cup games, which was also the story of Chelsea’s first-leg defeat at the Riverside on January 9.

Michael Carrick, the Boro head coach, got the better of his opposite number on the night, targeting auxiliary left-back Levi Colwill and being rewarded when the hosts’ winner, swept home by Hayden Hackney, came via a cross from the right.

There is no question of Pochettino rotating on Tuesday, not least because of Chelsea’s injury list, and he must get his lineup right and ensure the players are up for the occasion.

“We need to match their desire and energy,” he said. “Maybe I am so repetitive, but that’s the most important [thing], because we will face a team that is going to fight and be strong and have some players that can cause us problems.”

Pochettino’s Spurs reached the League Cup Final in his first season at Spurs, beating second-tier opposition in Sheffield United over two legs of the semi-final.

Their defeat to Jose Mourinho’s Chelsea hurt but was no disaster, given the respective states of the two clubs and Pochettino’s grander ambitions, while the win for the Blues felt relatively small-fry as they went to be crowned champions that year.

This time around, the League Cup carries far more weight for both Pochettino and his new club, leaving little room for error on Tuesday.