Chelsea news: Thomas Tuchel proud of his players despite losing to Manchester City

Chelsea’s narrow defeat at Manchester City on Saturday might be a massive blow to their title ambitions, nonetheless, manager Thomas Tuchel was all praise for the attitude shown by his players. He chose to point to the way the Chelsea players have kept fighting despite the recent obstacles they have faced. The 1-0 defeat means Man City have now extended their lead over the Blues to 13 points with a 12th consecutive home win. Sitting third with 43 points from 22 games, Chelsea now have a mountain to climb in order to have a chance at going to the top of the Premier League table.

Even though Chelsea FC lost, Tuchel was all praise for his players for showing the effort or desire to fight for the team despite the continuing problems caused by their teammates being absent through injury and Covid. “I love the ambition and I love the attitude and I love the hunger with which we are playing,” Tuchel was quoted as saying by their club’s website. “We are still brave and we are still up for a good fight and you can trust anybody that you put on the pitch. It is a pleasure to be on the sideline.

“It makes a difference if as a player you have to fight every single day for your place, every single match for your place, and this is not the case in our team for too long. If you have a negative Covid test and you’re fit and you’re not injured, you have a huge chance to be in the line-up. For that I give huge credit and for me it is proof how good the attitude and the mentality is in our team and in our club.”

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Tuchel on transfer window

After the game, Tuchel was asked if he feels his squad needs reinforcing with new additions during the transfer window. However, the manager insisted that the only thing he wants right now is to have all his players available for selection. “I think we just need our whole squad. Our team is a strong team, and even now on Saturday it was a strong team,” he added.

“Was Liverpool able to compete last year for the title? No. Maybe the only real difference was that they were missing Virgil van Dijk. I’ve said it many times, key players are key players because they are key in everything that they do and everything in how they behave.”

“To compete, to do what we want to do and what we did on Saturday also for 90 minutes, we need everybody and we struggle from long-term injuries, we struggle from Covid. This is the circumstances and still we are reliable and still we push ourselves and still we will not make a big thing of it. It is just to explain the situation.

“As you saw on Saturday we still believe in ourselves and that we can come up with a performance that can hurt even Manchester City. We did and like I’ve said many times before if we play the same game again, maybe we get a draw and it would not be completely undeserved.”