Chelsea take on our London rivals Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League’s Monday evening fixture, hoping to carry our performance from Wednesday’s Carabao Cup victory over Blackburn Rovers across the capital and get back to winning ways in the league, following last week’s defeat at Brentford.

The win over Blackburn saw Reece James back captaining the side from the start for the first time since the draw with Liverpool on the opening day of the season. However, Mauricio Pochettino has been managing the full-back’s return to the side, with two substitute appearances preceding that start, and admitted it is not a given he will be in the line-up again at Tottenham.

‘I don’t know,’ conceded Pochettino. ‘We’ll see first of all if he is available and then if my decision is to play with him from the start.

‘He was okay after playing an hour against Blackburn. I think it was good for him to start the game and to feel him there again after a few months for the team, because he is our captain and he is a very important player. Now we need to assess him, if he’s ready or not to start on Monday.

One player who is definitely making positive progress in his return to the action is Armando Broja, who has been unavailable since picking up a knee issue with his country during the last international break, but is back in training and nearing a place on the team sheet.

‘It’s good because today we were talking and maybe he will be available to be on the bench for Monday,’ added our head coach. ‘He was training today and before in the last few days, and doing well. I hope that he can be involved in the game, but still it’s not confirmed.’

With two English-born graduates from Chelsea’s Academy – Broja was born in Slough, but plays his international football for Albania – in the process of returning to the fold, that is certainly positive news, and Pochettino underlined why he feels local players provide an important link at any club in the modern game.

‘Because we are in England and it is about not forgetting that,’ he explained. ‘Today football is very global but it’s important to keep the culture and the idiosyncracy of the country and for me the English players are important.

‘It’s important to keep the identity. Of course, I love players from everywhere, because if they are good it’s better, but I think we need to understand that we are in England, in a country we need to respect the culture of.’

The potential return of striker Broja could also give our attack a boost, with the young striker having scored on his first start of the season shortly before being sidelined by that injury.

As it is, Pochettino discussed the continuing challenge of making our team more clinical in the final third to convert strong performances into more goals, and subsequently more wins. However, he stressed it is as much a mental issue as anything else, and cannot be solved simply by more work on the training pitch.

‘You can work every day and you can spend a lot of time on it. You can work but improving or not improving is about your confidence and your feelings. Players need time to recover their trust and their feelings. Not because you practice more.

‘You need to have the right attitude and you need to settle yourself with good feelings, the will to do it. When you have a block you can practice and practice and it’s the same. But if before you practice your mind is in the right place you can improve. At the moment we are fighting with this. We are looking to recover the trust in our offensive players.

‘The most important thing is to get a good balance because from many circumstances the ball is not hitting the net. But I think we are in a good way and you can feel that we are improving, progressing. It is part of the process, it is part of the project. It is normal when you have young players arrive at a club like Chelsea where the demand is so high from the beginning. The demand and the competition doesn’t wait for you and you need to perform.

‘You need to put all the circumstances and differences, like coming from a different league, aside. There is pressure because of the history. That is why it’s about the process but I am not concerned about that because we know what we are doing and for sure it is going to arrive, the moment that we are going to perform. Not only to perform but translate performance into results.’