Chelsea manager Mauricio Pochettino has spoken highly of 22-year-old Armando Broja, calling him a player with “amazing potential” who “needs to push himself.”

After Armando Broja scored for Chelsea in their 4-0 FA Cup third-round victory against Preston, Mauricio Pochettino lauded him as one of Europe’s most promising young strikers.

In the second half, the 22-year-old scored his team’s first goal at Stamford Bridge, replacing Nicolas Jackson who is away at the Africa Cup of Nations.

Chelsea lacked a finishing touch to complement their dominance of the ball, and Preston had done an excellent job controlling them in the first half. However, in a span of eleven minutes in the second half, Broja scored the first of three goals.

Within his own penalty area, Mykhailo Mudryk chased down Will Keane and then passed the ball to Malo Gusto, who crossed it in, and Broja headed it in.

After a brief tip from Thiago Silva, Raheem Sterling smashed a free-kιck past Freddie Woodman.

The gap to Ryan Lowe’s team, which finished fourteenth in the Championship, ultimately opened up when Enzo Fernandez scored a goal in the final minutes.

Pochettino intimated that the Albanian striker Broja had more to offer and lauded his performance after he returned to fitness in September following a nine-month absence due to an ACL ιnjury.

He emphasized that it held great significance for him. He needs to score more often, get a better feel for the net, and develop his game by playing this style of game, I’m afraid. He has to work on his physical condition and his body language simultaneously. He must rise to the challenge and take action. He should be more upbeat and cheerful.

It has incredible potential. Here we are discussing one of the most promising young strikers in all of Europe and England. But now he needs to challenge himself, and we’ll do our best to show him that no amount of effort is ever sufficient.

Because of his ιnjury, he was out for about a year, and now he obviously needs more time. He has a hard time performing to our standards. Our faith in him is unwavering, and we have enormous expectations. We will always challenge him to do better.

I told him to grin. We make fun of him all the time for being a “happy boy” who needs to smile more, laugh more, and absorb more positive energy.

After a bright beginning, Preston manager Mark Lowe felt his team let the game slip away in the second half.

“We were really hurt” by the three goals scored in eleven minutes, he stated. Prior to their goal in the 58th minute, we played fantastically for a significant portion of that match.

I don’t think the score represents their skill, and it’s disheartening to lose, but they do have great players who can score goals.

In my opinion, our guys were top-notch. The most important thing to me is that they tried their hardest.