Thomas Tuchel reveals he got his tactics wrong in the first half of Chelsea’s win against Lille in the Champions League on Wednesday.
The Blues progressed to the last-eight of the European competition after a 4-1 aggregate win against the Ligue 1 team.
The Blues took a 2-0 lead to France for the second leg but their lead was halved when Burak Yılmaz scored before the break.
It came after an impressive start from Lille, with Chelsea looking very shaky in the opening exchanges.
Christian Pulisic scored just before half-time to calm Chelsea’s nerves and Azpilicueta capped off the comeback in the second half to round off the win.
It was a deserved win in the end but Tuchel concedes he got his tactics wrong from the start and his team only improved when he realised he needed to change.
‘We did what was necessary. We dug in and got a deserved win. It’s difficult here,’ said Tuchel.
‘Chelsea has this kind of culture within the club where we work every day. What I found from day one was a football first mentality. Everybody pushes the first team every three days, everybody goes to the limit and is focused on football.
‘We’ve been trying to implement an atmosphere. This culture is already installed and this helps us now to focus with difficult and distracting times because it’s always there.
‘We encourage the players. It feels so good we can still produce results and I’m proud.
‘We weren’t so good in the first half. The pitch was horrible and it made things complicated. It was a new pitch not ready to play on. The tactics weren’t right in the first 20 minutes, I take responsibility. Then it was more fluid.
‘It was very important to calm everyone down. We were lucky with the post.
‘We hope and expect to carry on. We want to compete. It took a lot of sacrifice, we fought hard to be in the last eight. We’re excited for the draw. We have a game in Middlesbrough three days later.’
