Every word Mauricio Pochettino said on Chelsea transfers, Nkunku injury, Casadei recall and more

Mauricio Pochettino faced the media on Monday afternoon ahead of Chelsea's crucial clash with Middlesbrough on Tuesday evening. The Blues are looking to turn the tie around with Boro boasting a one-goal advantage going into the Carabao Cup semi-final second-leg at Stamford Bridge.

After a mini winter break for Chelsea, their coaching staff and the squad, it is now back to the serious business and for Pochettino, a real chance of taking a big step towards his first major honour in English football. But standing in his and the Blues' way are a stubborn Boro team that showed they are no walkovers with an impressive performance just less than a fortnight ago.

As always, Pochettino's pre-match press conference was packed with questions about a variety of topics. With that said, football.london brings you every word the Argentine had to say ahead of his team's semi-final on Tuesday night.

Mauricio, just how significant is tomorrow's game?

«It is a passport to go to the final, to visit Wembley. It's a really important game for us. We need to show that it's really important for the club, for us, for everyone. We want to be in the final but first of all we need to beat Middlesbrough, a very good team that in the first-leg we cannot beat.

»It's going to be tough like the first half of the leg. We are confident we can have a very good game in front of our fans at Stamford Bridge. We need to take advantage of playing at Stamford Bridge and the energy from our fans."

Do you sense the players are hurting from the first-leg?

«I think we were very disappointed after the game. When you analyse the game, I think we deserved more but football is sometimes not to deserve; it's to be clinical, to score goals and to defend strong and to be also in