Thomas Tuchel lamented his side's 'soft defending' following Chelsea's loss to Southampton at St Mary's. The Blues fell to a 2-1 defeat despite opening the scoring and did not cover themselves in glory for either Romeo Lavia or Adam Armstrong's strike.
Cesar Azpilicueta perhaps too easily put the ball out for a corner before his stretched clearance landed at Lavia's feet. The Saints star was given plenty of time to line up his strike to level up the scores. Chelsea then failed to put enough pressure on the ball in the build-up to Armstrong's winner in a performance that lacked energy overall.
Tuchel's side have struggled to find form in the opening five games of the Premier League season, and Chelsea are already seeing patterns emerge.
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The Blues boss said: "Obviously we're not tough enough to win these matches at the moment, away. It was the same story at Leeds. At Leeds, the problem was that we did not score in the first 20-25 minutes, and they pushed us off balance in two minutes with two goals. We could not find any answers. We thought we at least had answers in the first few minutes of the second half.
Today, we scored, so obviously, everything was okay, but one set-piece again. One sloppy defending again. Then we are off balance, and today we did not react to it, we were lucky not to concede a third goal. We were not tough enough as a team to react or push it over the line for us."
He went on to add: "Soft, soft, soft defending. What stops that? Pure mentality, stop it by pure mentality. Spot it with defending intelligently. There is no superiority for the opponent, there is no need to give shots away, there is no need. Just toughen up. As a team, show a different mentality. It's my assessment today, I don't like to talk about it normally because you cannot prove it with data, or the body position or the tactical position in the field. It's like this. Both goals are cheap goals, soft goals and should not happen if you expect to win a Premier League match on an evening in an away stadium."
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