Yahoo Finance Thomas Tuchel frustrated that Chelsea’s ‘big mistakes lead to easy goals’
Thomas Tuchel criticised his defence after Chelsea’s title prospects suffered another blow when they fell to a sloppy 3-2 defeat at West Ham. Chelsea, who have won two of their past five league games, were unusually slack at the back at the London Stadium. Édouard Mendy was at fault for two of West Ham’s goals – the goalkeeper gave away a foolish penalty for the first and misjudged Arthur Masuaku’s mishit cross for the winner – and Tuchel said his team must stop making mistakes.
“The performance is enough to win the game,” Chelsea’s manager said. “But what we clearly see is that we give easy goals away. This is really unusual. We make big mistakes that lead to big chances, that lead to easy goals. We do this now in three match days in a row: Man United, Watford and again today. If you do this at this kind of level, you cannot expect to have a result.
Related: Arthur Masuaku’s late fluke completes West Ham’s comeback win over Chelsea
“The next 90 minutes is interesting – to have the focus and the attitude right. We are not good enough in the details at the moment. We do too many big mistakes and we need to care more about the details.
“There’s no need to ask big questions or start doubting about the big picture. If you play at West Ham, that’s about details. Without doing big mistakes, there’s a big chance we win this game.”
Tuchel said Mendy is struggling at the moment. “I don’t know why exactly, but it seems he has lost a bit of confidence. OK, decision-making was not at the highest level today at the first goal, but we also bring him into a really awkward situation. He could have saved the situation. He did not. We are far, far away from blaming anybody, but we need to admit we are making too many crucial mistakes.”
Chelsea’s injury list lengthened when Marcos Alonso and Kai Havertz limped off, while Tuchel is unsure when N’Golo Kanté will return from a knee injury. “I have no idea when he will be back. We’re missing not only N’Golo but also Mateo Kovacic for four or five, six weeks. And Jorginho is playing with hip pain for many days – and you can see it.”
West Ham, who lost Kurt Zouma and Ben Johnson to injury, are fourth in the table. “We didn’t play well enough in the first half,” David Moyes said. “The second half we improved greatly and that gave us a real chance.”
Moyes said he had congratulated his matchwinner Masuaku for a “great cross” that somehow ended up in Chelsea’s net. “We have to say it was a bit of a lucky goal,” Moyes said.
Masuaku also laughed about the goal. “So, was it a cross or was it a shot??!? (hint: I was as surprised as you),” he wrote on Twitter.
