Chelsea coach, Thomas Tuchel was very pleased with the performance his team delivered in their 1-0 win against Tottenham Hotspur. Chelsea’s only goal was scored via a penalty by Jorginho. Jorginho scored his penalty confidently to give the much deserved win to the Blues and the first London derby victory to Tuchel. The German coach later spoke about the player choice he made for the game and especially for the penalty kick after the former coach made it clear that Werner will be the one to take it.
He even expressed his concern about his main defender, Thiago Silva’s injury. The veteran center-back left the match just before half-time and the coach hopes that his injury is not serious at all.
‘In general, I am very pleased with the result, it is a deserved win,’ he said as per Official Chelsea Website. ‘We were very good in the first half, very dominant and strong with the ball, good counter-pressing and we did not allow counter-attacks against one of the most dangerous sides.
‘We lacked a little bit of precision in the box and composure to make it 2-0 and to score more goals and decide the match, so the second half was a bit hard. We had some easy ball losses, and we lost a little bit of ball possession and confidence, but we never lost the structure to defend, we never lost the intensity to push up high, and the courage to defend up high and upfront, so I am very pleased.
‘It is normal if you play a dominant game like this and you don’t score the second goal, it can happen that some minutes arrive when you have to suffer, but we were absolutely ready for that both mentally and physically, and I am super happy with the effort. We defended excellently.’
The coach pointed out some major chances not taken by the team to kill the match way before. He admits that not doing so may give the opponent to bounce back at any point of the game. He was elated about the fact that only one chance was created by Spurs in the entire match towards the end. Spurs striker Carlos Vinicius missed a header out wide during the end.
‘We need to create more clear chances, this is the objective and the job from me. One of the hardest things in football is to score and keep calm, but we have trust in our players and we will work to create more clear chances, and to be more effective, but in general, everyone wants to score with every half-chance but it is not like this in the Premier League.’
‘It will be very tight for Sunday’s game, only two days recovery,’ Tuchel said about the likelihood the player will be out. ‘It is too early to give a diagnosis because I saw him very briefly with a big strap around his muscle. We will have to wait until tomorrow so we can confirm it but I think for Sunday he is a big doubt.’
Thomas opened up on how his team has been practicing penalty in the training ground and how their veteran third-choice keeper, Willy Caballero has been pushing the players to be best at their spot-kicks.
‘The guys took some penalties in the last nine days after training,’ he reported, ‘and we have Willy Caballero pushing our penalty takers to be absolutely serious. If you are not serious you don’t score against him, so you get a pretty good picture of who is capable and who is not.
‘Jorginho and Mason Mount were the names we put down and I went to Jorginho just before the match and asked him if he feels confident if we get a penalty and he said clearly yes. So we trusted him but I did not talk to him about how to take them. The players have to do it how they feel confident, and we are very happy he could score it,’ he added.
Chelsea will face Sheffield United in their next fixture of the Premier League and no doubt winning is the only option for the Blues now.
