Chelsea boss Mauricio Pochettino is urging his players to end their goalscoring woes by being more ‘natural’ in front of goal.
The Blues enter tomorrow evening’s Carabao Cup clash against Brighton on the back of their worst start to a league campaign since 1978, languishing down in fourteenth place in the Premier League table.
The lack of goals has become an issue, as Chelsea have only scored five goals in six league games, and despite having several great chances, they failed to score once again in their 1-0 home league defeat to Aston Villa on Sunday afternoon.
Yet, Pochettino insists his side will become clinical, but also stressed how improving their goalscoring fortunes will be a collective responsibility.
“We are playing well,” Pochettino said. “We have too many good things, very positive things, it’s only that we are not clinical in front of the goal. That is what we need to fix and try to give more confidence to our offensive players. That is the responsibility of everyone.
“Confidence in one aspect is to score goals. We need to be more natural. When you watch the game and every single time to create chances, it’s not only about your positional game, your movement, if you play with one or two strikers, or different characteristics of the game, it’s most important to be natural.”
Misfiring striker Nicolas Jackson is available for tomorrow’s match at Stamford Bridge, despite the Senegalese international being set to serve a one-match league ban for receiving his fifth yellow card of the season against Villa.
However, the Blue boss confessed that striker Armando Broja is still lacking the necessary fitness to make his first start of the season tomorrow. The 22-year-old Albanian international came off the bench to play his first minutes in a Chelsea shirt on Sunday since suffering a serious ACL injury last December.
The Blues’ boss said: “He [Broja] is not ready to start. I think he is helping the team and doing well but he needs time to be fit again to be able to start a game. I think for 20, 25, 30 minutes he can help the team but he is not ready.”
