FIGHTING FIT
Blues are pumped up for brawl-or-nothing week
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.
Apart from the 5-2 defeat against West Brom 10 days ago, Chelsea have been unbeaten throughout his reign.
That one blip was made worse by reports of a training ground bust-up the following day between Antonio Rudiger and Kepa Arrizabalaga, with the former 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 their 2-0 ‘away’ win over Porto followed by the 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 their FA Cup semifinal. When asked if he had the characters in his dressing room to see him through the challenge, Tuchel kept a completely straight face for his reply.
“Honestly, you don’t want to be in a fight with Toni Rudiger,” he said, before adding the names of Cesar Azpilicueta and Mateo Kovacic to that list.
“They are all emotional guys and they are always ready to fight.
“It’s in their nature to show it on the pitch and to protect the interests of our team, which is very important.” England international Ben Chilwell has totally bought in to the idea that an apparent negative can be turned into such a positive.
“You can probably tell it is a squad that is together,” he said. “Since the manager has come in the form has been brilliant from the team.
“We are playing well, we are not conceding a lot of goals, which shows the togetherness.
“The incident that is getting brought up is a positive because it shows that we are all fighting and competitive because we want to be successful and it gets brushed under the carpet straight away.
“It is very important that we have these things that make us want to be better and push each other.
“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.
“Well, if you want to finish the season with a trophy, we’d better win both matches, otherwise it could be difficult!” said Tuchel.
“Because the Premier League title will not exactly be ours to lose! It doesn’t help to reflect too 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 that we have already a result and forget what we did at Crystal Palace because it’s the past.”