November 7th 2023.
Levi Colwill was involved in a heated exchange with Pape Matar Sarr shortly before half time, leading Mauricio Pochettino to believe he had lost his focus. As a result, he was taken off at the break with Marc Cucurella playing the second half at left-back.
When asked about his decision to replace Colwill, Pochettino said: "Yes, because I think after the yellow card he [Colwill] lost a little bit his focus and it is too much risk. Marc [Cucurella] is doing well also so I thought not to take a risk. We wanted to avoid the problem for different things, to get another yellow card was going to be a risk for us."
Things only got worse for Spurs as they were reduced to nine men in the 55th minute when Destiny Udogie was given his second yellow card for a foul on Raheem Sterling. Nicolas Jackson took advantage of Spurs' high line to score a hat-trick and seal Chelsea's 4-1 win.
When asked in his post-match press conference if he was pleased by his side's discipline in such a high-tempered game, Pochettino said: "Thank you for the good question because that a team that arrives like Chelsea, that is a very new team, it's a thing that we are still far away from what we want, we are building something there, but we need time and to come to the leader against a team that was full of confidence and after to concede because we really, we started the game really bad, very sloppy and we cannot connect, we were very nervous and then how reacts the team."
He continued: "They deserve all of the credit the players, of course, and the team and I think we were calm after because we start to create chances and force them to make the mistake and then we get the goal and I think after the control was there. It's true that we concede some chances that we cannot concede that, I agree with you. Maybe we can assess the performance and to see the goal of Dier or this type of situation or Son, that we lose the ball and we allow them to run, of course, we need to control better. But that is about, you know, the situation. It's about that we are building our confidence and when you need to be more relaxed in the way that we play and you need to have more the capacity. It's not about the quality it's more about the emotional moment and when you see that you can win the game, sometimes you take wrong decision, but that is about with the time we are going to improve, we have the capacity and we have the quality."
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