Thomas Tuchel said yesterday’s FA Cup final defeat to Leicester City does nothing to alter the level of pressure facing his Chelsea team when they meet Brendan Rodgers’ side again on Tuesday with a top four place at stake. Tuchel found no reason to be overly critical of his players following another final defeat and can see no concerns regarding the mentality in the dressing room at the beginning of a fortnight that has the potential to overwrite much of his impressive work since taking the job in later January.
Thomas Tuchel said: “They are quite down but I hope we’ve built a relationship that goes beyond our results. Sometimes we’re not happy with our performances if we win, sometimes we’re not happy when we lose. There are aspects from this game we can absolutely be satisfied with. It is super hard to accept it but there is no team in the world that has not lost a final. We’re not the first, we’re not the last. This is about bouncing back and we’ll not stop pushing the team. This was a different competition, a cup final. Now we enter back in the race for the top four. It’s in our hands. It’s another two finals. And I’m not sure yet how to approach the team tomorrow. I’m not angry, I’ll not give too much criticism. It’s about staying positive. What can we improve? How did this feel? What can we learn from it? It’s about bouncing back. It’s so hard to accept because never think about losing a final when you arrive. When it’s like this it’s the best thing to play again on Tuesday. We’ll conserve the positive things, improve the little details. We need a little bit of luck to turn things around. We never lied about that. We said that when consistently winning. That has not changed. I hope the atmosphere is not too negative.”
Tuchel then repeated his claim that Chelsea, who struggled to make Leicester goalkeeper Kasper Schemichel work until the latter stages, deserved to win and were merely unlucky. He also rejects any suggestion that the dressing room may lack the strong leadership required to immediately overcome such a setback.
Thomas Tuchel added: “I’m not even sure if we need to be more determined. I’m not ready to analyse this game from the result backwards. We were determined. We have enough leaders, it’s a strong group that deserved to be in the final. This group deserved, for me, to win the final. We can absolutely accept we did not win and can improve in some moments of this game. But we did enough to win this game. We were simply unlucky. If you have a group that arrives in this final, arrives in the Champions League final and in place nine or ten for top four, there’s no reason to doubt we’re not strong enough to handle this situation. Strong enough to arrive here, strong enough to handle the situation. That’s the challenge. Is it easy? No. It’s fun because this is what it is about. There are a lot of teams out there jealous of our situation I can tell you.”
