TUCHEL: I TAKE THE BLAME
Chelsea boss gets his team selection all wrong as Baggies run riot to end his unbeaten start after Silva is sent off
OF all the ways in which Thomas Tuchel’s serene opening sequence at Chelsea might have come to an end this was one nobody envisaged.
Walloped at home, conceding five against a West Bromwich Albion team with a goal allergy and seemingly doomed to the drop even before they rolled into Stamford Bridge, a ground where they had not won a league game since 1978.
Tuchel had negotiated his first 14 games without defeat. Not only that, he had seen his side concede only twice in that time, and one of those two was an own goal. And there seemed little cause for alarm when Christian Pulisic tucked away the rebound from a Marcos Alonso free-kick to open the scoring.
But things began to unravel once Thiago Silva was sent off and once the unravelling began it did so in spectacular style.
Chelsea collapsed into a nervous wreck a s West Brom were transformed into cool and clinical counter-attacking killers, seemingly capable of scoring at will.
‘Hey, we won’t be on last today will we,’ guffawed Sam Allardyce as he took up his position for a post-match interview with BBC’s Match of the Day. It was a reminder of how he built his reputation by roughing up the Premier League’s elite and revelling in it.
‘ We demolished a Chelsea team undefeated since the new manager arrived and you can’t say it’s because they were poor or went down to 10 men,’ he said. ‘It was down to the quality of our performance. We totally outplayed Chelsea.’
There is lots to do if Allardyce is to preserve his proud record of never being relegated. They are still seven points adrift of safety but here at last was a glimmer of hope.
‘It keeps us going,’ he said. ‘It keeps us alive. Perhaps we can reach this level again.’
As for Chelsea, they could be sixth after West Ham play Wolves tomorrow and must find a response ahead of the Champions League tie against Porto in Seville on Wednesday.
Tuchel took responsibility for his decision to rest players based, he insisted, on a lack of preparation time, rather than with Porto in mind.
Silva returned after 11 games out injured but was sent off for two yellow cards with less than half an hour of the game gone. His first offence came when Jorginho played a careless pass out of defence and straight to Matheus Pereira, who was hauled down by Silva before he could reach the penalty box. The VAR checked for a red card but found in favour of the Chelsea defender, although his escape was short-lived as he collected his second yellow for a late challenge, as he lunged feet-first in an effort to block a shot by Okay Yokuslu.
It was a bad day for returning veterans. Branislav Ivanovic, who s pent ni ne years at Chelsea, came off the bench to replace Dara O’ Shea. He was only on the pitch for 13 minutes when he tore a hamstring.
Chelsea were already ahead and down to 10 men when Ivanovic was injured. Allardyce reacted by risking another attacker in Callum Robinson and was duly rewarded.
The equaliser came from a long kick by keeper Sam Johnstone, not attacked by defender sin blue and gratefully picked up by Pereira, who executed a neat finish, lobbed over Edouard Mendy. It was a first goal conceded by Tuchel’s team since Southampton scored against them on February 20 and ended a record-equalling run of seven successive clean sheets. It also opened the floodgates. Pereira pounced for his second after Mbaye Diagne gathered the ball and set the forward off on another jinking run ending with another cool finish. Tuchel’s response was to send on Mason Mount for Pulisic and the 10 men poured forward but West Brom protected their lead. Semi Ajayi typified the