I’m afraid the whole ‘it’s only a pre-season friendly’ argument goes out the window when you are playing your local rivals.
No game is a friendly when Chelsea play Arsenal, but unfortunately for Thomas Tuchel’s Chelsea last night, there was only one team treating it like that, and it wasn’t the German Coach’s team.
They were thrashed 4-0 by London rivals Arsenal in their third pre-season match of the campaign, meaning that they have now lost two on the bounce in pre-season.
It’s far from ideal preperation for the new season, that is now just 13 days away from starting. It’s very worrying signs indeed for Blues fans, who are also growing frustrated with seemingly being about to sign Jules Kounde, with then Barcelona coming in to potentially beat them to that as well.
Tuchel’s words after the game, as delivered by Football London , were just as worrying. “Far from relaxed,” Tuchel said.
“I think we deserved to lose – which is fair enough – because we were simply not good enough. We were absolutely not competitive. The worrying part is the level of commitment, physically and mentally, for this match was not the same, it was far higher for Arsenal than us.
“We can argue they played with I think their strongest line-up; they’ve had now together several weeks and for more than one year. They’ve strengthened their line-up, played the same structure, and this is the line-up they’ll try to start Premier League games.
“It was not our strongest lineup and this is part of an explanation but only a little part. The other part is worrying.
“I can not guarantee [that Chelsea will be ready for the new season]. I saw today a team in Arsenal who are mentally committed to an idea of playing, a level of exhaustion, a level of physical commitment that we could not match.
“Also, a level of mental commitment that we lacked because we have a lot of players who are thinking about leaving and looking at their options. We have players that have left and I think at the moment that’s obvious.”
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