Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has hailed the role Petr Cech and Marina Granovskaia played in dealing with Romelu Lukaku after his explosive interview with Italian media.
Extracts from the interview were released last week, with Lukaku expressing his unhappiness with life at the club since making a Chelsea club-record transfer from Inter in the summer.
The Belgian star had specifically talked about his struggles to adapt to Tuchel’s 3-4-2-1 formation as one of the reasons for his unhappiness in the Premier League in the wake of his return to Chelsea.
The interview prompted a furious reaction from Tuchel, with the German coach dropping him from the matchday squad for the crucial game with title rivals Liverpool on Sunday.
With Lukaku out of the team, Christian Pulisic started up-front and the American winger scored Chelsea’s second goal in the draw that has left them 10 points behind leaders Man City.
The Belgium international is now set to return to Tuchel’s squad though having had talks with the Chelsea head coach this week.
Those meetings led to Lukaku apologising for his actions and he is now available for selection against Tottenham.
“There will be some discipline actions of course and he will accept it; what happened, happened. Something happened, he will be fined and of course he needs to accept it,” said Tuchel.
“It’s not about I push my opinions through or the club pushes their opinions through, we are adults and we reflect the situation.
“The more the story went on I had a clear opinion and I was happy that was OK with the club to go with it. And I had a feeling it was really OK, as I also spoke to the other players.
“We have a very open, close relationship and we can find very quick solutions, without any political interference, putting every disturbing factor aside and just looking at the issue isolated on the moment and from there we went.
“And it was very nice to be a part of it. Between Petr, Marina and me it was very calm, very quick and very open.”
