Chelsea ‘mentally and physically tired’ – Tuchel

Thomas Tuchel again blamed Chelsea’s injuries and a packed fixture schedule after they drew 1-1 at Brighton in another disappointing performance.

Hakim Ziyech put the visitors ahead but Adam Webster’s second-half equaliser earned the Seagulls a deserved point.

“If you look at our situation of long-term injuries, of key players injured and of Covid and you look at our schedule you will have the answer,” Blues boss Tuchel replied when asked what has gone wrong for his team.

“We’re tired. We’re mentally tired and physically tired and you can see it in the performance. It’s as easy as that.”

Tuchel was also asked about his decision not to make changes until a late triple substitution.

“If I had the impression they were needed earlier I would have done it earlier,” he said.

“We could have done it earlier but I had to wait if Brighton maybe changed their structure and we struggled with Marcos Alonso and his yellow card, so there were some reasons not to do it earlier and that’s why we did it in the last 15 minutes.”

Chelsea were below par again and striker Romelu Lukaku continued to look out of sorts.

And Tuchel initially refused to give his opinion on Lukaku’s performance when asked about the Belgian, although he did end up defending him to some degree.

“I will not talk about single players,” he said.

“Today was not about Romelu. There’s too much questions about Romelu and too much answers.”

But Tuchel did add: “He is by far not the problem and he is part of the solution.”