Chelsea icon Joe Cole took aim at Kalidou Koulibaly and Hakim Ziyech as he lamented a "bad night" for his former club following their shock Champions League loss at Dinamo Zagreb.
The Blues fell to a 1-0 defeat in their Group E opener thanks to an early goal from Mislav Orsic, who produced a delightful dink past Kepa Arrizabalaga while bursting through one-on-one. The visitors had over two-thirds of possession and outshot the Croatian club by 15 to six, yet the two sides registered the same amount of efforts on target (three) at the Stadion Maksimir.
Far too often, Chelsea were toothless going forward and vulnerable on the counter-attack, which is undoubtedly concerning given they spent £250million in the summer transfer window. Cole was less than impressed by one of the new Stamford Bridge arrivals, Koulibaly, and also criticised Ziyech when asked to give his assessment of the Blues' performance.
The former England playmaker said on BT Sport: "Where do you start? The guys at the back have got to pull it together as soon as possible. People will look at the goal but we could have pulled out countless examples where Koulibaly was the wrong side of his man. For a 31-year-old defender, he needs to get up to speed quickly.
"At the other end of the pitch, is there a lack of confidence? The only positive for Thomas Tuchel is there were a lot of players knocking on his door before this asking why they're not playing and saying they want a chance.
"Those players have come in tonight and haven't taken their chance, so at least he can tell them now that's why they're not playing. Ziyech, he's got a lot of talent but, for one reason or another, it's not clicking for him at Chelsea.
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"He wasn't at his best and he hasn't been at his best. He's trying hard and trying to make things happen but it's not happening for him. It's a bad night for the club. It's a massive shock."
Adding to Tuchel's headache, Ziyech appeared to be involved in an on-pitch spat with teammate Reece James regarding free-kick duties in the second half of the defeat by Zagreb.
"It's an underperformance from us. We have the same story as always," the Chelsea boss said in his post-match interview. "We have an okay start, we don't finish our half chances, we don't feel it when the game is already there to put to bed in the first 15, 20 minutes. Then we concede one counter-attack, which is far too easy, and from there we struggled."
