Chelsea urged to close gap in Wembley clash with ‘benchmark’ City

Thomas Tuchel has admitted Chelsea still lag behind Manchester City, but will hunt down Europe’s “benchmark” club next season.

Chelsea face City in today’s FA Cup semi-final with Tuchel taking charge of a match at Wembley for the first time and chasing a maiden managerial win over Pep Guardiola.

The Blues’ German boss believes Chelsea still have long-term ground to make up on quadruplechasing City, but has exhorted his players to close that gap for 90 minutes this weekend.

Asked if this meeting with Guardiola will be the first time he takes on the decorated Spanish coach as an equal, Tuchel replied: “Yes and no. We have to accept that there is a gap between us and Manchester City.

“If you look at the fixture in the Premier League and the fixtures in the last years we have to accept this. And it’s important that we accept this without making ourselves too small.

“So from next year on, from day one of next season we will hunt them, we will try to close the gap between us.

“For me in Europe there are two teams who are the benchmark, there is Bayern Munich and Manchester City.

“But of course he made it impossible for us to compete with Mainz.

“I think we had two draws with Dortmund and then a cup final in a penalty loss, and another draw at home with Dortmund.

“We came close and it’s time that we beat them and the next try is tomorrow.

“I don’t believe in how big clubs are, how tough it is or are we equal or not.

“We have to admit there is a gap but for 90 minutes we are very selfaware and very selfconfident that we believe we can close the gap tomorrow for one game.”

Andreas Christensen and Mateo Kovacic will miss out with hamstring trouble, but N’Golo Kante is ready to start.

City striker Sergio Aguero is sidelined with a muscular problem.

● Leicester take on Southampton tomorrow in the second semi-final.

James Maddison, Ayoze Perez and Hamza Choudhury are available for the Foxes after being dropped for last weekend’s league defeat at West Ham after breaching coronavirus restrictions.

James Justin (knee) and Harvey Barnes (knee) remain out along with Wes Morgan (back), but Caglar Soyuncu (coronavirus) and Cengiz Under (hamstring) are back.

Southampton will be without on-loan Liverpool winger Takumi Minamino, who is cuptied, but striker Michael Obafemi has returned to training.