Man City 1-0 Chelsea
Tuchel stressed that his side did not create the opportunities they needed to cause enough trouble for Man City.
Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel admitted that his side “lacked quality upfront” after their 1-0 defeat to Manchester City on Saturday. Kevin de Bruyne scored the only goal of the match that sent the Cityzens 13 points clear at the top of the English top-flight as Chelsea were left ruing a few missed chances at the Etihad. However, Chelsea boss Tuchel has issued a rallying cry to his offensive players, asking them to ‘show more’ when they attack. The Bavarian told BBC’s Match of the Day: "Given the circumstances, if you look at our back five and how many players we missed, I'm happy with the performance, defensive-wise. "In the second half, we created counter-chances. We had one big chance to even go ahead. We lost a tight match, which can happen. It was about individual quality, and we lacked quality upfront if I'm honest. "You have to wait for momentum. We had the same opportunities in the first half, but from eight or nine transition options we had zero touches in the box. The quality, the deliveries, and the composure was absolutely not on the top level today. You need top level to get half chances and chances, and that's what we lacked in the first half. "Our offensive players need to show up more. We need consistency. Chelsea is not a place to hide."
When asked about the Premier League title race, Tuchel replied: "It's about commitment. We can be sure that we're trying. If City win 12 matches in a row and we're struggling with injuries and Covid, it's not the best time to close the gap. The gap is big because they deal better with Covid and better with injuries."
Chelsea left-back Marcos Alonso admitted afterwards that the 13-point gap City have created will be an arduous hurdle to conquer.
‘It’s disappointing,’ the Spaniard said about the result. ‘It was maybe the last chance to keep on fighting for the Premier League. We will keep trying until the end until it’s gone mathematically, but it will be difficult now.
‘We need to think about Brighton in three days, win that one, keep training hard and not look at the table at this moment.
‘The chances were there but we just lacked a bit of good decision-making in the last third to create even more chances or to score the couple of chances we had,’ added Alonso.
‘It was a tough game but we knew it would be and still we had some chances even if we were not fully in control of the game and the possession. We defended well and all together.
‘We had a couple of chances to go 1-0 up and we were not that far from getting something from the match. We expected something like this before the game but we competed well so of course we are disappointed.’
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