In recent weeks, Mauricio Pochettino has presented a consistent message around where his Chelsea side need to continue improving to take the next step in their development.

The theme of maturity and competitiveness has been recurrent, but our head coach was at pains to make clear he is talking about maturity and competitiveness as a team, as he believes you don’t necessarily need to rely on experience to create those strengths.

‘Being mature and being experienced are completely different things,’ said Pochettino, ahead of tonight’s Premier League fixture against Everton. ‘For different reasons, as a team, all the elements are not there to be more mature and to learn and to evolve like a team.

‘That is because of different circumstances that we were living. There were too many circumstances that were always happening that meant it was always difficult for the team to evolve.

‘The players are very competitive. If not it would be impossible for them to arrive at a club like Chelsea or to be a professional.

‘It’s about the team needing to create this together and help each other, because we have enough talent to win games.

‘The most difficult thing in the Premier League is to create a competitive team that all together develop this capacity to help each other to be competitive. Because if a player is competitive and has 10 players that are not competitive with them, in the end they are going to fail.’

Pochettino also pointed out that within the Chelsea philosophy of building a team from young players with big potential, there are also more experienced players in his squad, and they are playing a crucial role in the process.

‘In the squad we have Thiago Silva and Raheem Sterling who have experience, or Marcus Bettinelli who maybe is not playing but I want to say that he is doing a fantastic job because he’s helping the young guys. So we have experienced guys also in the squad.

‘That is not going against the project. That is trying to have some guys who are helping the young guys to be a professional, to perform, to understand what the Premier League means and the standards of Chelsea.’

It is not just the more experienced players who Pochettino believes must carry all the burden, though.

He feels there are younger leaders in his squad, like Reece James and Conor Gallagher, and expects others who joined Chelsea more recently to grow into leadership roles as they become more established at the club.

‘We are in a project where 80 or 90 per cent of the players are young and maybe they need to grow together. Of course they need some help. That is why we are here, to help them in this process, to become leaders and be improving.

‘But we are talking about so many players who only arrived at Chelsea and the Premier League this season. John Terry was young also and needed to build, he wasn’t already the leader of the team at 18 or 19.

‘It’s like if you compare Nicolas Jackson with Didier Drogba in his first season. Jackson could be a leader, but Drogba wasn’t the leader in his first season. So of course with time we can create good leaders.’