Mauricio Pochettino admitted Chelsea have to accept that Liverpool were the better team as they suffered a 4-1 Premier League defeat at Anfield, but believes his players now know where we need to improve before they face the same opponents in the Carabao Cup final later this month.

It was a difficult night for Pochettino and his team away at Liverpool as they 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 Chelsea were second best on this occasion by saying: “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 (Liverpool) 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.”