Chelsea travel to Newcastle United tomorrow as we resume the action following the November international break with a tough Premier League tie at St James’ Park.

We went into the break in good form, thanks to the thrilling 4-4 draw with Manchester City and the 4-1 victory away at Tottenham Hotspur which preceded it. That leaves Mauricio Pochettino confident his side can pick up where they left off, despite the interruption.

‘The break was in a bad time but we are going to try to keep the momentum,’ he said. ‘We have another amazing game against Newcastle, a very good team. It’s going to be tough because the atmosphere of St James’ Park is always amazing.

‘We are going to try to keep the momentum. We were already in a moment where we were really building our way to play and the results were on our side. But I believe that we can keep the momentum, even with two weeks with no competition.’

However, for all the positives of those two performances against leading teams – along with the draws against the other two sides currently in the Premier League’s top four, Arsenal and Liverpool – they also underlined one of the issues Pochettino is trying to counter to give us more consistency.

At times our performances and results against teams in the bottom half of the table have failed to match those same standards and Pochettino revealed he has held talks with his players and staff about solving that very issue in recent days.

Thankfully, with no further international breaks until March, he feels this is the perfect time to come up with solutions and put them into practice.

‘For us it’s a good time ahead because we love to work and we need to work all together and spend time together, on and off the pitch. It’s going to be an important period for us, to settle even more our principles and our ideas.

‘We were not consistent in this first period of the competition. For me it’s tough, because we perform really well against the big teams like Arsenal and Liverpool, and then we struggle to compete with teams that maybe have less quality than us and maybe play in a different way.

‘That is why we were talking with the players over the last two weeks and today in our meeting about trying to find out why and what we can do to improve our performance against those teams.

‘That is part of the process because we are a young team that started working four months ago and that is about being more mature. We were talking about needing to be more patient and not get frustrated so soon when things don’t work or if we don’t create the chances or if we don’t score goals.

‘That happens because of the expectations of Chelsea. It maybe creates some nerves when you play a team with maybe less quality than you and you start to take rash decisions, get frustrated or you want to do the job of your team-mate. That is about being more mature and having more time together.

‘I think that is one of the points we are going to improve with time. Now is a good moment ahead to stay all together and work in this area. More than tactical or physical things, I think it is about being more mature as a team.

‘The most important thing is to realise and to be clever in the way that we assess things, and then to give the tools to the team to perform in a different way.’

One issue which Pochettino has been working on and already seem to be improving is his players’ consistency in front of goal, after we netted four times against each of Man City and Spurs.

He is guarding against complacency, though, insisting at this stage it is important to keep building for the long-term and not jump to conclusions because of one or two results.

‘The most important thing is our balance and to be consistent in the way that we think. Even after scoring eight goals against Manchester City and Tottenham, we need to keep going in the same direction, we cannot change every day based on our last result. It is important to assess after a period.

Of course when you win games the perception is different than when you lose and the opponent always treats you in a different way. The most important thing is that we are more confident and now we have a great opportunity to confirm that we are in a good way.

‘But we need to understand that tomorrow we are going to face a team that is really strong, that the atmosphere is going to be tough. It is going to be difficult and we need to be ready to compete and fight for every single ball.’