Chelsea take on Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge on Friday evening in the second of two cup massive cup ties in SW6 in the space of four days. Ahead of tomorrow's FA Cup fourth round match, we have already booked our place in the Carabao Cup final with an emphatic victory over Middlesbrough on Tuesday.

The Blues had a one-goal deficit to overcome from the first leg, but brushed that handicap aside by inflicting a heavy 6-1 defeat on our opponents.

Given that turning possession into goals has proven to be a problem for Mauricio Pochettino's team on occasion this season, preventing us from getting the results our performances have sometimes deserved, our head coach believes that wide margin of victory could provide an important confidence boost for the Blues, even if he won't be getting carried away.

'Always it’s about a matter of time,' he explained. 'Now it appears there is so much positive data and records, and before the Middlesbrough game it was all negative. That is football, when you score goals and win games everything that looked not so good suddenly looks good.

'For us the most important thing is in both moments we need to be realistic in how we see things and we are not going to change the way we assess things or the plan for the future.

'But of course I am happy because I think we deserved it. Our performance has been one thing and afterwards our results have been something different. There are too many details that we need to control better and to compete better, because we are a team in the process of growing.

'We need this moment to live together, to realise that we can improve. To score six goals is always going to be important to build confidence and show ourselves also we are capable of scoring, that in every single offensive action it is possible to score. It’s not to think that we cannot score in every single offensive situation we have, it is the opposite. We need to think that every time we have the ball we need to finish by scoring or trying to score.

'So it was important because that builds our confidence and our trust. The performance was really good from the beginning of the season but we could not be clinical enough. Now if we start to score goals I think we are going to win the games that maybe we could not win in the past.'

Pochettino also knows that confidence boost could be especially important tomorrow, when we take on an Aston Villa side that has been in impressive form, becoming many people's Premier League surprise package and currently sitting fourth in the table.

'It has not surprised me, first of all because I think that Unai Emery is one of the best coaches in the world, and then he is building a very good organisation at Aston Villa.

'They have amazing players and the project of Aston Villa is very clear, that is why they are performing and winning games. So it does not surprise me. I am so happy for him and all the people that are involved in this project because I know them very well, there are so many Spanish guys there.

'So we know them really well and we are so happy because they are doing a fantastic job. It’s the way that they play and their philosophy of football, the quality of the players, there are so many characteristics.

'But you can feel that it’s a very solid team with very clear ideas. And then experienced players with young guys also. It’s a very good group of players, a very good squad that is performing really well.'

He also pointed to Aston Villa's last visit to Stamford Bridge - a narrow 1-0 defeat for the Blues in the Premier League after Malo Gusto's red card left us to play the final 30 minutes a man down - as an example of the difference a bit of confidence in the opposition box can make.

'I think it was the type of game that we should win, even with one less player. We had a few chances to score when Malo was off in the second half. We performed really well, we deserved more, but we didn’t win and then the confidence goes to Birmingham. We deserved more and that confidence maybe could have helped us be in the position that they are in now.

'It was an even game that they won because they were clinical in the actions they had in the second half, and the actions we had we didn’t score. I think we deserved more, but full credit to them since, in what they are doing. What I learned is that we cannot play with 10 men against a team like Aston Villa because they can punish you.'