Thomas Tuchel admitted he is struggling to understand Chelsea’s struggles at Stamford Bridge in recent weeks.
Arsenal’s 4-2 win over the Blues meant that it was three straight defeats on home soil in all competitions for Tuchel’s side, the first time Chelsea have had such a run since 1993.
Not only have they lost three matches, to the Gunners, Real Madrid and Brentford, but they have conceded 11 goals across those games and have looked incredibly vulnerable at the back.
Ahead of West Ham’s visit to Stamford Bridge on Sunday, Tuchel believes that the poor run has had an impact on the mentality of the Chelsea players and left them more susceptible to disappointing results.
“It’s unusual and I don’t know what it is, if it was just the one thing, we would switch dressing rooms or take another hotel or something like this,” Tuchel said.
“But that would may be more superstition than anything else. I have no solution but it’s also not the level that we want to produce in home games. It’s a bit fragile at the moment I have to say, it was against Brentford and against Real Madrid.
“It was straight away better in the next three games. And then we had a good start to the Arsenal match actually, I was very happy with the energy and the quality.
“But then you have the feeling of ‘oh no, not again’, and once you have this feeling it’s hard to get rid of it.
He added: “Normally you want to feel in a home game that you can feel still capable of coming back no matter what happens. But now it’s a bit different but very hard to argue, because it seems obvious we’ve had a row of three home games with very similar results that we absolutely don’t like.
“And it’s now the job to convince the players to keep on going, the supporters to keep on pushing and to hang in positive, because we have a lot to build on, we have a lot to rely on and also to trust.
“So don’t get superstitious now, and don’t believe in things that maybe are not there. But it is another challenge on top of the others.”
After that defeat to Arsenal, Tuchel took aim at the Stamford Bridge pitch as he suggested the surface played a significant role in the defeat, particularly for the first goal when Andreas Christensen got caught playing a terrible backpass.
The German was less angry a couple of days on when asked about his comments, insisting all those involved in the preparation of the pitch were working as hard as possible to correct the issue.
“I don’t know, I’m not a specialist on it and we’re looking into highest level in every department and I know everybody is trying hard,” Tuchel said.
“I said it because the first goal was from Andreas but it was because of a funny bounce of the ball and we had more of them in the game.
“It was awkward to play and calculate the speed and bounce of the ball. So it’s like this, that was it, but I know everybody’s working hard in every department to provide the best level. And so we try and keep on going.”
