Chelsea manager says defeat to Brentford not because of match against Real Madrid

Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has reacted to his side latest devastating defeat to Brentford in the EPL on Saturday.

Tuchel stressed that the defeat to Brentford had nothing to do with their next game against Real Madrid in the UCL.

This comes as some quarters believed Tuchel made a reshuffle of the Blues squad because of their UCL clash.

He said in a post-match statement, “We selected the team because we thought it was the best team against Brentford. Not half an eye or one percent of one for Real Madrid.”

“Maybe if we lost 1-0 or 2-0, or starting too late. But this was not the case. We struggled in the beginning but I felt us more tired mentally. Not fresh enough. This is normal. Yesterday, we were wearing gloves and it was snowing in training. Today, it was very, very warm. Again, it’s more difficult for us than them to play as the underdog and be well prepared for this match. We are well prepared but are in one half of a training session.

“It is more difficult, but in the context of all this I am ok with the first half. The half-time speech was like this. A reminder to keep on going, a reminder of where the spaces are, where we want to accelerate, where we want to stay patient, where we want to take more risks and it would come with more fluidity. And it did. We started very well. I did not see the distraction there so why should we be distracted and think about Real Madrid when we are one goal ahead. Maybe it was the general feeling that now we are ahead and have it, and we got punished for that.”