Chelsea face Real Madrid on Wednesday hoping to bounce back from their heaviest defeat of the season, but Thomas Tuchel says he will not look for drama in the Brantford loss after so many good results. Watch the pre-match conference here.
While Saturday’s shock 4-1 home defeat by Brentford was hardly ideal preparation for the quarter-final first leg against Real, Chelsea boss Tuchel has dealt with worse setbacks during a turbulent period for his club.
Aware his players cannot afford to feel sorry for themselves with Real’s visit to Stamford Bridge looming, Tuchel tried to downplay the extent of the Brentford defeat.
“After so many wins and so many good results, I will now refuse to make a drama out of it. Why should we?” he said.
Challenging Chelsea to respond against LaLiga leaders Real, Tuchel said: “It’s hard to take because it’s very unusual for us what happened. It’s a summary of strange events but it’s on us and it’s our fault.
“We will dig in and try to find out why it was like this. There are some reasons which we can put on us and we will analyse and digest it. There is nothing else.”
Tuchel might take heart from the parallels to a similar result on the same weekend last season when Chelsea crashed to a 5-2 home defeat by soon-to-be-relegated West Bromwich Albion.
That stunning setback served as a wake-up call for the Blues, who won at Porto in the Champions League quarter-final first leg just days later.
Tuchel’s revitalised team embarked on dominant run that carried them all the way to victory over Manchester City in the Champions League final.
Their hopes of an instant response this time may rest on Tuchel’s team selection.
Having left Jorginho, Reece James and Mateo Kovacic on the bench against Brentford, Tuchel is likely to make changes for the Real showdown.
“We selected the team because we thought it was the best team against Brentford,” Tuchel said.
“There was not half an eye or one per cent on Real Madrid. This was our fault and we have to analyse it quickly.”
Pre-match conferences:
