Why Chelsea lost to Arsenal – Tuchel

Thomas Tuchel has said avoidable mistakes played a huge role in their 4-2 loss to Arsenal in the Wednesday night London derby at Stamford Bridge.

This is the third consecutive home defeat for the blues in as many games following heavy home defeats to Brentford and Real Madrid. The losses were all punctured by individual errors from an hitherto solid Chelsea’s defence.

Andreas Christensen’s poor back pass set the tone, allowing Eddie Nketiah to score the first, and he got his second after Emile Smith Rowe’s well-worked strike following a turnover, before Cesar Azpilicueta gave away a late penalty for holding onto Bukayo Saka in the box.

Reflecting on the match, Tuchel claimed the Stamford Bridge pitch is a problem for his side in reference to the opener, but also criticised his side for creating problems from situations when they should have been in control.

He said it would be practically impossible to win games if such mistakes were being made at this level.

“It was a totally wild and open game in the first half – already a 2-2 after we came back twice. We had a good start but again gave the first goal away, which is impossible to do these things in consecutive matches. But we’re doing it. We came back twice, and we scored another two in the second half, unfortunately for the wrong side.

“It’s a level of mistakes, the number of mistakes in consecutive games here at home, it’s impossible at this kind of level. You don’t see this. It’s simply impossible, but we’re doing this at the moment, and you cannot win football games like this.

“To say the pitch is difficult to play here it maybe sounds like an excuse, but it is a very, very difficult pitch that we have here. It’s not in our favour. The ball bounces very awkwardly in front of Andreas when he wants to play this ball. But still, we had the same mistake against Real Madrid that cost us the next round of the Champions League, and this one cost us the next match. I can’t remember when we got two goals like this.”