Chelsea’s striker have failed to fire since Thomas Tuchel took over from Frank Lampard as head coach and the Blues boss has admitted it might be difficult to play the role with him overseeing the tactics. Tuchel was asked ahead of Thursday’s trip to Liverpool if it was hard to be a centre forward not just for him, but for Chelsea as a club as the Blues have had their fair share of dud strikers in recent memory.
Thomas Tuchel said: “Maybe both. If you ask the players they may say clearly yes. This is it. To be centre forward for Chelsea I would say clearly yes. You have big names being centre forward for that club and the demands and the stakes are high. Everybody expects you to be a mixture of the best players who have played here as a number nine so the level of expectations are super high.”
Creating chances for his frontmen is as big an issue for Tuchel to solve as it is for the striker’s to get their shooting boots but Tuchel is optimistic it will click sooner rather than later.
Thomas Tuchel added: “Have we created too many chances? No. But I think we have created enough touches in the box, we have enough recoveries in the last third, we have enough half chances, deliveries to create more,” Tuchel added. It is not the moment to doubt too much, it is the moment to look at the things where we are very, very strong in the games and it is the moment where we should not compare games against Manchester United, who defended at the highest level, an away game against Atletico Madrid and, for example a game at Southampton where I was absolutely not happy and not convinced with our offensive performance. So it’s not a general thing that we have to worry and doubt about. We have to put into relation against whom we are playing. That will maybe not change tomorrow. Whoever expects us to create ten big chances and go out of this match with six expected goals has a high possibility to be hugely disappointed. So I don’t do that. And will it become easier tomorrow for our No9, whoever will play there? No, probably not. But we are on it. That game is super complex. Do we always train defence? No, not at all. We train always offence and still we are a super solid team defensive wise. So it is very complex how to be solid and still capable of scoring, how to not be just offensive thinking and open up three, four big chances for any opponent. We are on it. It is not so easy. If we find a solution hopefully everyone will see it. Right now it is the advantage to be absolutely competitive on the highest level. This is what we have and from there on we start to find solutions. Honestly we have to say we were so strong and my players were so confident in ball possession that we also closed spaces down for our strikers because they were not too open the last games that we played, that makes it maybe even more difficult, but we are on it.
