Under-fire Poch fighting to prove that he's a step up from Potter

CHELSEA’S mini-revival came to a shuddering halt with Tuesday’s 1-0 defeat at Championship side Middlesbrough in the Carabao Cup semi-final first leg, another game in which Mauricio Pochettino’s side were desperately short of cutting edge, verve and identity.

- Dan Kilpatrick

The Blues should still be confident of overturning the deficit back at Stamford Bridge on January 23, but the evening in the freezing north-east was another bleak occasion for Pochettino, his team and supporters — many of whom were left frustrated by the lack of acknowledgement from the players afterwards.

Chelsea’s brief uptick had consisted of wins over struggling Crystal Palace, Luton and second-tier Preston in the FA Cup but, as ever with this iteration of the Blues, any sense of momentum was short-lived.

It is now 18 months since Clearlake Capital’s takeover, and Chelsea last won more than three games in a row in all competitions back in October 2022, a run consisting of nine matches unbeaten immediately following the appointment of Graham Potter.

It felt, at the time, like a promising start to a new era — the new owners settled in and now with their own man in the dugout — but Potter was sacked in April last year after losing 11 of his next 22 games in charge.

The mild-mannered former Brighton coach left west London as something of a punchline, amid the sense he had taken on a job simply too big for him.

Looking back, perhaps it is time for some revisionism of Potter’s tenure or an acknowledgement he was way down the list of problems at Chelsea.