Thomas Tuchel delivered some tough love to his Chelsea players in a meeting where the German coach laid bare the club’s problems.
The Chelsea manager had held onto his frustration and anger from Wednesday’s 3-1 Champions League quarter-final first-leg beating by Real Madrid at Stamford Bridge.
Tuchel conceded Chelsea’s Champions League defence was all-but over even at the halfway point of their tie on Wednesday and by Friday lunchtime he had not revised that opinion.
He held discussions with his squad on Thursday, in the wake of Chelsea leaking seven goals in two game across only five days.
“It was not a discussion type of meeting: yesterday, it was more that I gave my point of view and that’s sometimes also necessary,” said Tuchel.
“We always take the players’ view into account. But over the last two games we felt it was maybe necessary to give our point of view.
“It was behind closed doors in an atmosphere where everybody can take criticism. “We don’t point fingers, we don’t look for people who are guilty, we are in this together.
“But we needed to point out some things in our game where we were not happy, but it was about the game. “We are aware of the problems and we don’t like them. I don’t know if we are concerned, but this is very untypical for us.
“We looked into it and we talked to the team about it, to try to figure out how to improve and to stop this direction of travel as soon as possible.
“It’s not like us at all to defend like this and that’s why we didn’t see it coming. It wasn’t the case before the national break and it’s not so easy because it doesn’t fit into a pattern.”
Chelsea were well beaten 4-1 by Brentford on Saturday and several alarming defensive issues continued in Wednesday’s loss to a Real Madrid side inspired by Karim Benzema’s hat-trick.
The Blues will now take on Southampton at St Mary’s on Saturday, with Tuchel determined his team will hit back to from.
