Mauricio Pochettino couldn’t hide his disappointment after a heavy 5-0 defeat away at Arsenal, seeing their poor start to each half as key and highlighting the team’s inconsistency as an area in need of immediate improvement.

Chelsea suffered at the Emirates Stadium on Tuesday, as Arsenal inflicted their biggest defeat of the season. Despite Chelsea having chances to equalise in the first half and going in for the break only one goal behind, the Gunners flew out of the blocks to get another shortly into the second half, and by the full-time whistle it was 5-0.

“I feel disappointed, really bad,” said Pochettino. “The performance wasn’t good, we didn’t start the game in the way we were supposed to start.

“We conceded the goal too easy, we made things so easy for Arsenal, started the game losing the game and after that it was really tough. 10 or 15 minutes after we conceded, we started to play a little bit and create some chances, like we started the game again.

“We were talking at half-time, saying it is not possible to start a game like that at this level, but we started in a bad way again in the second half and conceded two goals. Then I think the team gave up and we were not in the game.

“The most difficult thing to accept is the way we started, because the last 30 minutes of the first half we competed well and the game was even and we started to force them to make some mistakes to create some chances.”