Mauricio Pochettino attributes the ‘subdued’ atmosphere among Chelsea supporters to the impact of the past 18 months at the club.
In the EFL Cup semi-final second leg against Middlesbrough on Tuesday night, the Blues aim to secure a spot in the Wembley final.
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Following a 1-0 defeat in the first leg two weeks ago, a segment of supporters expressed their frustration towards the team.
This season has witnessed fans turning on the team multiple times, despite Pochettino experiencing a mixed start to his tenure at Stamford Bridge.
While recent results have shown improvement in the last six weeks, a sense of unease persists among the supporters.
Pochettino suggests that the club is currently ‘bearing the consequences’ of periods under Graham Potter and Frank Lampard, which instilled a prevailing sense of ‘disappointment.’
‘We are paying now for the effect of 18 months,’ said Pochettino.
‘We have been here for six months and sometimes for us it is difficult to appreciate or to compare. We arrived this season and it is only six months. It is true that we are getting better results now but, of course, the disappointment for the fans is coming from behind and last season.
‘Now people can give their opinion about this. Maybe it is a little bit more flat and not good because maybe it is disappointment from a long period but, in how we feel, Stamford Bridge is very good. OK, in a few periods in some games, like Brentford or Nottingham Forest, the energy was really down because the team didn’t engage [with] the fans.
‘That is our mistake. But in the rest of the games — Arsenal, [Manchester] City, Brighton, Liverpool — I think the fans were really good.’
After the 1-0 defeat in the north-east, Thiago Silva offered an apology to the supporters at the Riverside.
Pochettino emphasizes that the players feel the same disappointment as the fans when the results are unfavorable.
‘I think we all need to learn,’ Pochettino said.
‘Maybe it was our mistake so we need to apologise to our fans because sometimes I think that at the moment I can understand the players and also the fans.
‘The players were so disappointed, so upset, that you don’t want to think too much and you want to go inside into the dressing room and go home because you are really angry. But of course if we made a mistake we are going to try. People outside will tell our players that in this type of situation we need to recognise the effort of our fans and to say thank you independent of the result
‘It’s true that if we need to apologise, I am the first to do that if they didn’t feel cared for by our players, but I don’t think this was the intention.’
