Chelsea slipped four points behind Premier League leaders and title challengers Manchester after their 1-1 draw against Everton. The Blues boss Thomas Tuchel was left ruing the big chances that they missed to grab the win against the Toffees.
Mason Mason handed Chelsea the lead in the 70th minute but young defender Jarrad Branthwaite cancelled it out to bring home at least a single point from Stamford Bridge.
The Blues dominated the Toffees and had 23 shots in comparison to Everton’s five but they failed to convert them into goals and were left ruing those misses.
After the match, Tuchel lamented his disappointment with Chelsea lack of cutting edge in attack. The German told BT Sport, “Yes, of course (it is frustrating) to give away another lead. If we see the effort we bring in a match like this, the effort we need to score one goal and the effort the opponent needs to score an equaliser – it is hard to swallow.
“We missed big chances to get the result in the first half and second half we did not find the rhythm consistently and tried to bring on some energy from the bench, but it was hard. We had the lead and give it away with one free-kick.” Tuchel explained.
It was a match where Romelu Lukaku, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Timo Werner were self isolating and Kai Havertz was out with illness. So Christian Pulisic led the lines with Hakim Ziyech and Mason Mount close company. When Mount scored that goal in the 70th minute, the Blues looked like they were on course to bag three points but then things changed when Anhotny Gordon’s freekick found Jarrad Branthwaite who was free in the far post and made no mistake to slot it past Edouard Mendy.
Tuchel agreed that his team missed his regular starters but is not ready to count it as an excuse. “It is obvious we missed a lot of players, big personalities, regular starters, but we will not use it as an excuse.”
The German tactician was also quizzed about his opinion on the season getting postponed with COVID-19 cases rising once again. Tuchel replied, “I will not get involved in this sports politics. We are all worried about Covid, it is close to us, we had four positives.
“Other games get cancelled, ours didn’t so we have to do our best to win it.”
