Thomas Tuchel fears Antonio Rudiger could miss Chelsea’s clash with West Ham on Sunday through injury.
Rudiger was absent from the Chelsea squad for their meeting with Arsenal on Wednesday night as he had a groin issue.
In his absence, the Blues fell to a 4-2 defeat and Tuchel is not optimistic Rudiger will be back for Sunday’s game at home to the Hammers.
“Not good, I don’t think he will play against West Ham,” he said.
Tuchel, however, was keen to stress that he did not put Chelsea’s poor defending against Arsenal down to Rudiger being absent.
“We conceded seven goals with Toni against Brentford and Real Madrid so it’s not about individual players,” he said.
“It’s about the defensive performance as a team. You need to have the tactics right, which is doubtful if I had this right, and you need the team selection right, which is also doubtful if I had this right.
“Then it’s a game for the players. They get the full praise when they do it like they did in the last three matches so they have to face reality that it’s simply impossible to win matches like this if you make this amount of mistakes of this calibre
“I don’t see it in any other matches but I see it now in consecutive matches and it has to stop otherwise we are in deep trouble.”
