Tuchel not looking to turn blip into drama as Chelsea collapse against Brentford

Brentford had failed to score against us for 2.5 games, despite often playing quite well. And then they proceeded to score three times in ten minutes, before adding a fourth late on to complete a 4-1 humiliation of Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. Football is a weird game sometimes.

It’s our first loss in the league since mid-January and our first loss at home in any competition since late September — both 1-0 defeats against Manchester City.

“It seems like [a blip]. After so many wins and so many good results, I will now refuse to make a drama out of it. Why should we? Brentford made a lot of the ten minutes we gave them.”

-Thomas Tuchel; source: Football.London

Fair to say, this is a blip. It’s a big, bright, hairy blip, but a blip just the same. Tuchel isn’t looking to make a bigger deal out of it either. All that matters now is our response to it anyway.

“Nobody saw it coming, especially after going 1-0 ahead. It was very untypical of us. But we stopped defending. We were not aware of enough of the danger, were sloppy with the defending and got punished.

“They made the most of it in those 10 minutes. Right after their third goal we had 10 minutes where we had big, big chances and we missed them. They were lucky and clinical enough to get three goals. We did not defend like it is needed to in the Premier League and got punished.”

-Thomas Tuchel; source: BBC

The echoes of last year’s 2-5 defeat by West Brom followed in the wake of the referee’s final whistle, and there are certainly plenty of parallels — though this time it only felt like we were playing with ten (or nine) as opposed to actually playing with ten. That was April 3, now it’s April 2, both times just back from the international break. But we’re well in with a chance of reaching both the FA Cup and Champions League finals once again, so we can only hope that the season unfolds in a similar manner to last year’s from now on.

“I would not rely on it being destiny or it happens. We will dig in and try to find out why it was like this. There are some reasons which we can put on us and we will analyse and digest it. There is no other.

“It’s hard to take because it’s very unusual for us what happened today. Then we will refocus on Monday.”

-Thomas Tuchel; source: Football.London

That 2-5 loss was followed by a 2-0 win in Porto in the Champions League quarterfinals. On Wednesday, Real Madrid come to town for a bit of the same. Obviously, we’re going to have to play just a little bit better than today...

“It is not about Real Madrid. It is about us. It is one day off now and on Monday we start again.”

-Thomas Tuchel; source: BBC

Reality check the size of a Will Smith slap then.

Time to regroup, refocus, and respond.