Chelsea suffered their heaviest defeat in pre-season against Arsenal in the Florida Cup finals.
The blues were defeated 4-0 by their Londo Rival in the United States. Gabriel Jesus and Martin Odegaard gave Arsenal a two-goal lead in the first half. Despite Chelsea coming into the game strong in the second half but Arsenal was too good for Thomas Tuchel’s side. Bukayo Saka and Albert Sambi Lokonga
scored the third and fourth goals to give the Gunners a 4-0 lead and 100 percent win in all their pre-season games.
Chelsea has already signed Raheem Sterling for £45 million from Manchester City on a five-year deal and Kalidou Koulibaly for £35 million from Napoli on a four-year deal. Thomas Tuchel seems not content with Chelsea’s business in the transfer market but hints that the blues will need to sign more players if they want to improve.
What did Thomas Tuchel say?
Speaking at a post-match conference after their 4-0 defeat to Arsenal in the Florida Cup, The Chelsea manager said: “My analysis of the season does not change because of this game. Unfortunately, it proved my point.
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“The last week proves my point. I would absolutely prefer not to be right. I did everything to prove myself wrong but at the moment I feel that I was right.
“I look at the last season and parts of the game where we struggled, parts of the season where we struggled, and then we got sanctioned and players left us and some players are trying to leave us, and this is where it is.
“So we had an urgent appeal for quality players, a huge amount of quality players. We got two quality players but we are not competitive like this.
‘Unfortunately, you could see it today.”
Thomas Tuchel was not happy with his players’ mentality and physicality and slammed his Chelsea squad.
The Chelsea manager said: “Far from relaxed. I think we deserved to lose – which is fair enough – because we were simply not good enough. We were absolutely not competitive. The worrying part is the level of commitment, physically and mentally, for this match was not the same, it was far higher for Arsenal than for us.
“We can argue they played with I think their strongest line-up; they’ve had now together several weeks and for more than one year. They’ve strengthened their line-up, played the same structure, and this is the line-up they’ll try to start Premier League games.
“It was not our strongest lineup and this is part of an explanation but only a little part. The other part is worrying.
“I can not guarantee. I saw today a team in Arsenal who are mentally committed to an idea of playing, a level of exhaustion, a level of physical commitment that we could not match.
“Also, a level of mental commitment that we lacked because we have a lot of players who are thinking about leaving and looking at their options. We have players that have left and I think at the obvious moment.”
Chelsea’s next pre-season game will be against Udinese on Friday.
