Blues off colour but no reading of the riot act
Boss Thomas Tuchel handled 10-man Chelsea’s capitulation at the hands of relegation battlers West Brom with kid gloves.
Tuchel tasted defeat for the first time at the Stamford Bridge helm, with his clubrecord 14-match unbeaten start coming to a crushing end.
Matheus Pereira’s fine brace sparked West Brom’s stunning west London rout, inflicting Chelsea’s first defeat since January 19. Callum Robinson bagged a double of his own and Mbaye Diagne also hit the net for the Baggies’ first league win at Stamford Bridge since 1978.
Christian Pulisic and Mason Mount struck for Chelsea, but the Blues were bested in every department by Sam Allardyce’s side.
Tuchel insisted Thiago Silva’s 29th-minute red card for a second booking turned the game.
But the German manager also conceded the Blues were off colour throughout a dispiriting defeat.
Refusing to read the riot act in the dressing-room at full-time, Tuchel insisted he would delay any lengthy post mortem until today’s training session at the Blues’ Cobham headquarters.
“We cannot lose our heads now and take away the trust we have in these players,” said Tuchel.
“It was the moment after the game to be honest, be calm and to tell everybody to breathe.
“We had completely different plans how to start this match day, so we have to accept it now, it’s our first loss together.
“This is my responsibility. I trusted this line-up and I still think the line-up was strong enough now in this game. We were rusty, we were sloppy in the build-up in our own half and made many, many unforced errors.
“We didn’t adapt our positions under pressure. We gave away easy ball losses that led in the end to a red card and that cost us the game.”
Sam Allardyce hailed a victory which gives the men from The Hawthorns a fighting chance of Premier League survival.
“It just gives us hope. I think that on the quality of the performance and the way we demolished Chelsea, perhaps it gives us a little bit more than hope,” said Allardyce.
“It gives us hope, it keeps us going, and it keeps us alive.”