Pre-season tour: Tuchel reacts as Chelsea suffer 5-6 loss to Charlotte

Chelsea manager, Thomas Tuchel has criticised his players’ performance against Charlotte during their tour in the US.

Tuchel rated the performance as ‘not good enough, adding that Chelsea players lacked ‘precision’ and ‘decision making’.

The game against Charlotte saw the Blues lose 5-3 on penalties.

Conor Gallagher missed a decisive spot kick, and the Blues suffer their first preseason defeat.

Charlotte had the edge after Daniel Rios’s injury-time penalty cancelled out Christian Pulisic’s opener for Chelsea to make the game 1-1 after 90 minutes.

“In general, I would say we played a good first half but unfortunately, only 80 metres of the pitch,” Tuchel said.

“The last 20 metres of the pitch were not good enough, even in the first half. We found a lot of spaces to accelerate and penetrate the box but we struggled with our decision-making and precision in the last 20 metres.

“This was simply not good enough for the effort and quality we showed in the first 80 metres of the pitch and the amount of space we had.

“We also have to say we allowed two big chances out of nothing in the first half, otherwise I think we played a very good match in all the other aspects.

“Second half, it took us half an hour to show some quality and then it was maybe for ten minutes, so it was not good at all.

“Not offensively, not structure-wise, not in effort, hunger to be the dominant team. It was not good enough,” he said.