Thomas Tuchel reveals he got angry with Chelsea players over poor results

Thomas Tuchel held a meeting with his players on Thursday to urge that they wake up after consecutive damaging home defeats, having stayed up the previous night watching reruns of the reverse against Real Madrid that left Chelsea’s Champions League defence hanging by a thread.

The Chelsea squad were forced to sit through what Tuchel described as “not a discussion meeting … more that I gave my point of view” on the back of Real’s 3-1 win in the quarter-final first leg and the 4-1 Premier League thrashing by Brentford. Tuchel said no blame was apportioned but made no secret of his concern about their form since returning from the international break.

“I felt how untypical these kinds of mistakes and performances were for us,” he said when asked if clearing the air might lead to a change in fortunes. “That led to my reaction. I don’t know if it’s a turning point. You need to take care about the process and right now it was to be honest with the team, explain your reactions and why it is like this. It is necessary the players see, and can handle if the manager is angry.”

Tuchel thought his players had subconsciously operated at a lower tempo after coming back from their national teams. “Somehow after the international break we had the feeling like we play with 80%, 90% and we hope to get away with it, and it is not like this,” he said. “There are a lot of reasons, which can be reasons that you feel exhausted. But you need to overcome it. There is no other way and we need to kind of wake up, or remind ourselves again that the investment physically was not enough in the last two matches. We need to find high-intensity work again because this is what we do and this is what we lacked in the last two matches.”

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