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The dust has now settled from Chelsea’s 5-0 defeat to local rivals Arsenal last week, and one Chelsea player has claimed that the defeat was not on the manager at all.

According to left back Marc Cucurella, Mauricio Pochettino takes ZERO blame for the performance and result against title challengers Arsenal last week, and he has put the full blame on the players.

So just as Pochettino came out and protected his players and refused to blame them after the defeat last week, Cucurella has done the same and put all the blame on the players.

The Spaniard has been speaking to the media after Chelsea’s 2-2 draw against fourth placed Aston Villa on Saturday night, and he has once again backed the manager and claims the players are behind him.

Chelsea played very well in the second half against Villa and were actually unlucky not to get all three points in the end.

In words picked up by The Evening Standard, Cucurella said: “A lot of the games we don’t win – and that is part of the game – but I think it is more the whole problem because we have the quality and maybe we don’t show what we can do.

“When we lose 5-0, I don’t think the manager can do anything. I think it is more about us (the players), about our attitude. He has helped a lot of us, he has good communication skills, and the team supports him. We are in a good way.

“We all need to improve every week, stay at the same level, and have the same attitude every minute because we need to win. If we stay together, we can do good things.”

It is clear that many of the players are fully behind the manager right now, but his future remains very unclear as the pressure has built after a poor season overall for Chelsea.

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