Mauricio Pochettino is taking his press conference after the Carabao Cup final defeat to Liverpool, and he admitted that his team had dropped deeper and started playing for penalties because the were so tired as extra time went off.
He picked out a couple of his starters who were out on their feet by the end. He did replace them, but the players who came on simply didn’t perform at the same level.
“The players started to lose their energy. Chilly felt really, really tired. Gallagher, after five minutes, we needed to change. The team felt maybe penalties would be good for us. The effort was massive,” the coach explained.
“We made a few changes, like Gallagher and Chilwell in extra-time. But it’s true, we didn’t keep the energy how we finished the second-half.”
There’s no excuse for having been the more tired team. Liverpool are missing more players, they’ve played more games this season, and they played in midweek this week, while Chelsea had 8 days off.
We loved the effort from the team at times, but we had fresh legs to bring on while they had kids. There’s no way that being more tired can be a valid excuse, even if it does explain exactly what happened.
