Thomas Tuchel
That’s one win in seven Premier League games, where do you think it is going wrong and how do you fix it?
“We won twice against Tottenham in between [in the Carabao Cup] and had some other tough fixtures. I can’t even tell you the last seven games in the league so I have no answer.”
How concerning is the form in the Premier League, how do you have more consistency?
“I’ve answered this question a hundred times. If you look at our situation of long-term injuries, of key players injured, of Covid, and our schedule, you will have the answer.”
Can you assess the performance, why couldn’t you press home your advantage?
“Because we are tired. We are mentally tired and physically tired. You can see it in our performance. It’s as easy as that.”
You made a triple substitution on 78 minutes, do you feel they should’ve come earlier?
“If I had the impression we needed them earlier I would’ve done them earlier. You never know and time passes by. We could’ve done it earlier but I had to wait to see if Brighton changed their structure, we struggled with Marcos Alonso on a yellow card, so there were reasons not to do it earlier. It’s why we did it in the last 15 minutes.”
The players will have two days off, how badly do the players need that?
“So, so badly. You can say it is an excuse or whatever but it’s like this. Look at our schedule, when we arrived at Man City we had the Carabao Cup in the week and they did not. Now we arrive here and they have more days to prepare and the whole week before to prepare. It’s like this. We play since November. We are the team that plays and plays and plays. We need to recharge the batteries, disconnect. This is my feeling and it’s why I give the players two days off. We will prepare for two days, use Friday and Saturday to prepare for Sunday because we have a game against Tottenham.”
You seem quite downbeat, has the schedule affected you as well?
“No, but it’s hard to analyse games like this. We have to respect the opponent. It is very, very tough to play at Brighton. They played it like a cup game and the noise at the final whistle was as if we’d lost the game. This can very give you the impression we lost and we didn’t lost. Other teams will struggle to get points here. It is tough when you are at full strength and are not tired. So there are some obstacles to overcome and I refuse today to be angry because it’s not about our ambition or our want. We were a bit lucky to be one goal ahead and maybe we can take advantage and score a second one. But we struggle to show the quality and we know the reasons behind it. We demand a lot from us but it is not the moment to be too harsh with the team.”
Have you ever experienced a schedule like this in your career and how big a concern is that going into Tottenham?
“We are so happy we have at least four days. Look at our last week and you know what we are talking about. We had three away games in seven days, and it’s not only about playing it’s about travelling and not sleeping. We don’t do this for one week and then we complain. We don’t complain now either but we just explain why the performance can look like this in the middle of January in an away game at Brighton. This can happen and if you tell me that this never happened before to any Chelsea team or team in the Premier League, I can only laugh because it’s happened. We do this since November, so we arrive in a game where we don’t reach our full potential. Welcome to reality. We can’t be surprised and we want to do more and do it better, but in the end we have to accept it. We take a draw and we go. We tried everything, tried hard, but there is a certain level of fatigue we can feel.”
What did you make of Romelu Lukaku’s performance tonight, did you see positives?
“I will not talk about single players. Today isn’t about Romelu. There are too many questions about Romelu and too many answers about Romelu. Romelu is by far not the problem, he is part of the solution.”
