Tuchel fires clear warning message to Chelsea players after shock West Brom defeat
Thomas Tuchel has told his players that they will have to accept the big loss to today after Chelsea stunningly lost to West Brom.
After a scrappy opening 25 minutes, Christian Pulisic gave the club the lead. So far, so normal but then a red card for Thiago Silva turned the game on its head. West Brom scored twice in added time at the end of the first half, with Matheus Pereira bagging a quick-fire brace.
West Brom increased their lead just after the hour through Callum Robinson and then Mbaye Diagne made it four with the goal of the game. Mason Mount pulled one back for the club , only for Robinson to score his second of the game and his clubs fifth.
On where it all went wrong today, HE WAS QUOTED ON THE CLUB WEBSITE: “Nothing so much until the red card and then we were not able to cope with the situation,” he tells BT Sport. “I don’t know why but it was like this. After the red card, we could not adapt to the situations, we gave away two very easy goals before half-time but even in the second half anything that could go wrong went wrong. We have to accept a big loss today and hopefully it’s a big wake-up call for all of us, me included.”
On Thiago’s red card: “I didn’t see it but neither of them were his mistake because in the build-up we give the ball away. We got a red card and it was impossible for us to adapt to the situation. It’s not typical for us to concede a goal in the added minutes before half-time and today we conceded two. It was clearly not our day today. I did not see this coming. We need to digest it, shake it off and get back to work tomorrow.”
West Brom Sam Allardyce said: “We’re really pleased and satisfied with how the players applied their tactics today,” he tells BT Sport. “We set out to control Chelsea’s attacks and see what we could do in possession of the ball. And because we were so good in possession of the ball on so many occasions, and our quality of finishing, it gave us a thoroughly deserved victory. People will look to the fact that they went down to 10 men and so on and so forth, but I’ve been a manager of many teams with 10 men that have won or at least not lost. We took full advantage.
“We started well, we created chances. I think Silva was lucky to stay on when he pulled Periera back with both his hands. Then we had to recover from when they scored but we did that brilliantly. All five goals were quality, not just the finishes but the quality of the build-ups. It’s just a shame we couldn’t have shared some of those quality finishes in some of the other games. But I’m thrilled and delighted with the performance today.”