‘You don’t want to pick a fight with my boys’
THOMAS TUCHEL pulled off a managerial masterstroke ahead of five days of vital cup football by turning the only negative of his spell in charge into a massive positive.
Save for the shock 5-2 defeat against West Brom 10 days ago, Chelsea have been unbeaten throughout his reign.
However, that one blip was exacerbated by reports of a bust-up the following day between Antonio Rudiger and Kepa Arrizabalaga that led to the former being disciplined after being sent in early from training.
Tuchel insisted then that a line had been drawn under the matter and Chelsea bounced back with a 2-0 ‘away’ win over Porto followed by a 4-1 demolition of Crystal Palace.
Now they must get their Champions League quarter-final second leg work done without a blip before facing Manchester City in Saturday’s FA Cup semi-final.
When asked if he had the characters in his dressing room to see him through, Tuchel kept a straight face for his reply.
“You don’t want to be in a fight with Toni [Rudiger],” he said before adding the names of Cesar Azpilicueta and Mateo Kovacic. “They are all emotional guys and always ready to fight. It’s in their nature to show it on the pitch and to protect the interests of our team.”
Ben Chilwell bought into the idea that a negative can be turned into such a positive.
“You can probably tell it is a squad that is together,” the defender said. “Since the manager has come in, the form has been brilliant from the team. We are playing well and we are not conceding a lot of goals, which shows the togetherness.
“The incident getting brought up is a positive. It shows we’re all fighting and competitive because we want to be successful and then it gets brushed under the carpet straight away. “Going into the last stage of the season it is very important we are all hungry to be successful.”
And nobody needs any reminder of how crucial these next two games are. Tuchel added: “If you want to finish the season with a trophy, we’d better win both matches because the Premier League title will not exactly be ours to lose.
“It doesn’t help much about it.
“We have to play these games but it’s most important for me to be fully focused on what we do, and forget we have already a result against Porto and forget what we did at Palace because that’s in the past.”