By Felix Keith
Mauricio Pochettino admitted his side "gave up" during Chelsea's 5-0 thrashing by Arsenal, but refused to blame his players.
Chelsea were only 1-0 down at the break through Leandro Trossard's early effort, which went through Djordje Petrovic's legs, but they were ruthlessly destroyed in the second half. Ben White fired in from a loose ball following a corner before Martin Odegaard sent Kai Havertz through to score against his old club.
Havertz found the bottom corner via the inside of the post minutes later before White rubbed salt into the wounds by cushioned an intended cross into the top corner. It could have been 6-0 too, but Gabriel Martinelli fired straight at Petrovic when through one-on-one.
"I feel disappointed, I feel really bad. I don't feel great. The performance wasn't good. I think we conceded the first goal so easily, we made things easy for Arsenal," Pochettino said. "We were talking at half-time, saying it's not possible to start the game like this, but we start in a bad way again, conceded two goals and, in this moment, I think the team give up and we were not in the game.
"You can lose games - and Arsenal are competing for the Premier League \- but in the way that we compete... Why three days ago [against Manchester City] and today in this way? It's not an excuse - the starting XI is different names, but for the circumstances we needed to make changes.
"But that is the inconsistency that we are showing the whole season. Three days ago, a fantastic game where we deserved to go to the final and then today, you can use any word to describe our performance - it wasn't great, it wasn't good."
Chelsea weren't completely blunt in attack, but Benoit Badashile's glancing header from a first-half corner went wide and Nicolas Jackson's cross deflected off Gabriel Magalhaes and onto the outside of the post. Jackson put the best chance of a miserable second half into the side netting after wriggling past Gabriel.
The Blues were without star player Cole Palmer, as well as right-back Malo Gusto, while Pochettino chose to rest 39-year-old Thiago Silva following the 1-0 FA Cup semi-final defeat against Manchester City on Saturday. Mykhaylo Mudryk and Alfie Gilchrist came in for Palmer and Gusto and did not make an impact.
Pochettino admitted that nobody stepped up to fill the shoes of Palmer, but stopped short of pointing fingers. "But it is true, we didn't compete. I cannot blame the players," he said.
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"I think we make a team, we are showing this inconsistency and that is why we are where we are, because we are capable of having an amazing performance and then three days later we show that we are in extremes. When we have bad days we are so bad and then when we are good we are capable of anything."
Asked if he felt embarrassed, Pochettino added: "I think we cannot blame the players. I'm not going to. The circumstances are bigger than the performances of the players. We cannot blame young guys that came here. We cannot be unfair with our players. It is true that we are disappointed with the performance, but I'm not going to use a word that is unfair to describe our team."
Mikel Arteta was asked if he felt sympathy for Pochettino. He said: "All the sympathy in the world, with everything that he's been through and everything that he's doing, he knows that. And I've been on the other side as well. He's doing a great job. When you look at his team and analyse six or seven games of them, they deserve to win every match. They played big teams and deserved to beat all of them, so hopefully things will turn around and be as he deserves."
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