We wrote before yesterday’s game that it was going to be more of a fitness exercise than a significant football match – but Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel clearly doesn’t agree.
He wasn’t at all happy with his side’s performance as they drew 1-1 with Charlotte and then lost on penalties to the Carolignians.
“Second half, it took us half-an-hour to show some quality and then it was maybe for ten minutes, so it was not good at all,” the Chelsea boss moaned in quotes picked up by the Daily Telegraph.
“Not offensively, not structure-wise, not in effort, hunger to be the dominant team. It was not good enough.”
Conceding a last minute goal to the home team to send the game to penalties was a familiar kick in the teeth from some of last season’s results.
The constant changes to the teams weren’t have helped, but that clearly didn’t work as an excuse for Tuchel who wasn’t happy with the effort or execution on show.
Saturday night’s game against Arsenal provides a much tougher test against a team that’s at least a week ahead of us in terms of preparation. By that time, we should gradually be getting a better idea of what the manager is preparing for this season as a whole.
We need two or three deffenders