Juve in Tuchel sights
THOMAS TUCHEL resolved to restore Chelsea’s confidence by beating Juventus in
Turin on Wednesday night.
The Blues boss accused his players of lacking belief in the 1- 0 home defeat by Manchester City, but he regards a Champions League excursion against Juve as an ideal opportuntiy to repair the damage.
Tuchel said: “It’s no problem – we don’t care who we play against, we do our thing.
“It’s about making our opponents under-perform. We have the option of playing long balls up to Romelu (Lukaku) and without the genuine belief and confidence (to use them), you make poor decisions, and this is how the game went.
“Then, when we played the ball into our strikers, they made bad decisions with the first contact, so you lose more and more belief.
“It was not a good enough performance to deserve more.
“We were not happy with how we played and the decisions we took. We always look at performance more than results because results are the consequence of our performances.
“In the toughest games you need to be at the very highest level in all parts of the game, and clearly we were not.
“We are together, and that means we need the best level from the coach and the players, and we have to give all the selfreflection that is needed.”
Injury
Tuchel expects to know “within hours” whether England star Mason Mount, who missed the City defeat through injury, will be fit to face Juventus.
Juve pair Paulo Dybala and Alvaro Morata have been ruled out of Wednesday’s clash.
Skipper Dybala was in tears as he limped off the pitch 10 minutes after putting his side ahead in a 3-2 win over Sampdoria.
And former Chelsea striker Morata was forced off late on with a hamstring problem.
Boss Max Allegri said: “Dybala and Morata certainly won’t play. That is for certain.”
Report: See pullout