It was a difficult night for Mauricio Pochettino and his team away at Liverpool as we went two goals down before half-time. The Reds added a third after the break and, although Christopher Nkunku did pull one back, it finished 4-1 to the home side.

Pochettino felt it was important to acknowledge that we were second best on this occasion, and underlined that even if a couple of close moments in the second half - when Mykhailo Mudryk couldn't convert a good chance and we were denied a penalty for a kick on Nkunku - had gone our way and the result was different, he still would have been unhappy with our performance.

'It’s not about finding excuses,' he said. 'I think the performance was worse from us. They deserved to win, they were better than us. Being honest we didn’t perform in the way that we wanted to perform. They were better than us from the first action.

'It was so clear, they were more aggressive than us. For us it was difficult to connect and to play and always when we recovered the ball with our first or second touch we gave it away again so easily. They won all the duels, I just think they competed better. In all the areas they were better than us, that is why they won.

'In the second half at 2-0 there was the big chance for Mudryk. If he scored maybe that would start to build our confidence and we would play better, and also with the penalty in the action on Nkunku, maybe we would be in the game at 2-2 at that point. But even if we scored both of those and got a draw I would be disappointed because our performance wasn’t great.

'It’s good to have this feeling because it’s only one game, because if we want to compete against a team like Liverpool which is very consistent in the last few years competing for trophies and is one of the best in England, then we need to improve and we need to learn from this kind of game.'

Pochettino believes the only positive is that now his team know where we need to improve before we face Liverpool again in the Carabao Cup final...

'After 90 minutes in this type of game you need to say well done to Liverpool. Now we need to approach the final against them in a different way and we need to compete in a different way to how we competed today.

'It is going to be in Wembley and for sure it is going to be different at a neutral place, which of course is always different. That is the feeling the players have now and it is good because if we go to compete in the same way that we competed today for sure it is going to be the same result.

'If we don’t improve it’s going to be difficult. There’s always different circumstances and it will be a different game like today was different from the one in August. For us it’s about learning from this type of game. We were playing against a team that is at the top and always challenges for the big trophies.

'It’s good for us to feel that we need to improve because the way we were talking from the beginning, with all the circumstances, but we need to realise now we need to push ourselves a little bit more.'

He also knows we need to improve our performances away from home...

'It’s part of our personality, our character. We need to be more confident in ourselves. Now we are improving at home, at Stamford Bridge, which was a big problem last season, but now we need to feel confident also performing away from home.

'It’s about confidence, trust and we need to have the capacity to show the same performance when we play at home or away. But it is a matter of time.'