After winning the Champions League with Thomas Tuchel in his debut spell with the club, Chelsea went on to underachieve last season. Although the club picked up the UEFA Super Cup and the Club World Cup, the London side could muster only a runner’s position in their League Cup and FA Cup campaigns, losing narrowly to Liverpool on both occasions.
Furthermore, the Blues also endured troubles off the pitch thanks to their former owner Roman Abramovich’s confrontations with the UK government which led to various sanctions being imposed on the club extending even to transfer policies.
But the club managed to move past it and looked set to begin a promising new season under new ownership that has backed the manager well in the transfer window. Following Todd Boehly’s takeover, Chelsea has roped in Raheem Sterling, Kalidou Koulibaly and Marc Cucurella to better equip the German coach in the fight for silverware.
While the Blues secured all three points on the opening day after securing a 1-0 win away against Everton, the performance on the pitch did not exactly reflect improvement.
There still appeared the familiar lack of end product in the final third which plagued the London side towards the end of last season’s campaign. Not to mention, it was their lack of efficient finishing that cost the club both domestic cups last season by taking the finals to penalty shootouts.
Now, the departures of Lukaku and Werner has left Chelsea in a worse position, having to play without a proper No. 9 in their squad.
Even supporters of the club seemed to be dissatisfied with specific areas of Chelsea’s gameplay at Goodison and took to Twitter to critique the team.
But it appears that along with supporters, even head coach Thomas Tuchel seemed clearly dissatisfied with what he was seeing on the pitch even before half-time. From the footage that has now emerged online, the German manager was spotted engaged in an intense exchange of words with his coaching staff in the away dugout.
Not even half an hour into the first game and Tuchel was having strong words with assistant coaches Arno Michels and Anthony Barry. Michels has worked with the former PSG coach throughout his coaching career and has often been Tuchel’s right-hand man at a club.
While Michels is still a fresh face at Chelsea, Anthony Barry was a part of even former coach Frank Lampard’s team and has continued his stay along with Tuchel now. The Englishman is also the current set-piece coach for the Blues.
Despite their varying tenures in London, both men seemed equally distressed alongside Tuchel in the dugout early in the first half and it appears that it was Barry’s department that had caused the intense rant from the head coach.
In the first half against Everton, Chelsea set a personal record by winning the most corners by a side (13). However, barring a low-driven effort on target from Mason Mount, the rest of the corners delivered predominantly by Reece James were all easily cleared by Everton.
Most corners won in the first half of a Premier League game since the start of the 2016/17 season:
◉ 13 – Chelsea (vs Everton) ◎ 11 – Chelsea (vs Saints )
Mount’s effort came in the 19th minute of the game following which James delivered Chelsea’s fourth corner of the game which went out straight out for a goal kick and this appears to have caused the fiery reaction from Tuchel.
Furthermore, what makes matter worse is that Everton were statistically one of the worst sides in the league at defending set-pieces. As the team could not take exploit this weakness despite winning 16 corners in the game, perhaps the German coach’s reaction stands justified.
