Blues head coach Thomas Tuchel believes his team have been unlucky in recent weeks and has insisted he will not change the side's system for the match against Everton this evening.
Chelsea have not kept a clean sheet since our win against Juventus in the Champions League last month, a run of five matches, which is in stark contrast to the 10 clean sheets we kept in our first 18 matches.
‘We have the feeling that we got punished for not a lot. We are almost at half-time with already conceding and I am not sure why it happens,’ admitted Tuchel. ‘We are not the guys to look away and say this is bad luck. Back luck is a part of it. Maybe we need to understand from experience how hard it is to have consecutive cleans sheets.
‘My impression from the side-line is that the input defensively also from the strikers is still on highest level but some things maybe fell into place at the same time and it makes us feel more uncomfortable than it needs to be,’ the Bavarian added.
‘This is my view. We are aware of it, but not super worried. But I agree that eight goals in three matches is far too much.’
When asked whether it is the system that Tuchel believes may need tweaking, the Bavarian declined such a suggestion.
‘No, I cannot see this. We trust what we do and we use the same system to have consistent results and clean sheets. It is not like we only concede, we have also scored a lot.
‘Every game has its own story, there is not this one pattern that we suddenly get punished by long or short balls, whatever, we conceded penalties against us and like for every match there is some reasons why it’s like this.’
After conceding late goals at West Ham and Zenit to snatch vital points away from us, the Blues scored a last-minute winner at home to Leeds in our last outing and Tuchel believes that could spark some momentum heading into the festive period.
‘We are on it and I think the late goal victory and luck can also help sometimes to catch momentum back. We had the chance to give two days off and recover mentally, so let’s see.
‘I am still confident that we can get back on track and sometimes it is maybe necessary to understand how much we work and like how hard it is to be consistent on that level where we were.’