Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel insisted his team selection in Saturday’s 4-1 defeat to Brentford was not influenced by the upcoming Champions League clash against Real Madrid.
The Blues suffered a shock defeat at Stamford Bridge after conceding four goals in the second half.
Tuchel eventually decided to go back to a back three in the last half an hour of the game, but he interestingly opted to start the game with a four-man defence.
Ruben Loftus-Cheek also started as a number six ahead of Jorginho in midfield, while Reece James and Mateo Kovacic were among the substitutes.
Tuchel, however, denied that he deliberately fielded a “weaker” team in preparation for Real Madrid’s Wednesday visit to Stamford Bridge.
“No, absolutely not,” the German said in the post-match press conference (via Football London) on whether he picked the team with the Real Madrid game in mind.
“We selected the team because we felt it was the best team against Brentford.”
As expected, Chelsea were in control of the game for a large part of the game, but they only managed to create two big chances.
To put into perspective, Brentford had four big chances despite having just 30 percent possession of the ball.
Tuchel refused to point the finger at his players, though.
“It seems like it [a blip],” he explained.
“After so many wins and good results, I will now refuse to make a drama out of this. Brentford made a lot of the ten minutes we gave them.
“We will dig in and try to find out why it’s like this. We will analyse and digest it. It’s hard to take and it’s unusual what happened today.”
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