Time! It is not something a player at the top level expects to be allowed on the ball when appearing in Premier League or Champions League games, and nor can that player expect the luxury of much time to adapt or form understandings on the pitch according to Thomas Tuchel.That is simply the nature of the sport, he explains when asked to consider whether his varied selections in attack for Chelsea are having an impact on those players’ ability to score goals, the main statistic everyone is aiming to improve to go along with the team’s rock-solid defending.‘Maybe, and then it is clearly my fault and I take this responsibility for changing,’ Tuchel’s response begins, ‘but at the same time if we put a goalkeeper in goal we expect him also to perform in that very game, and if we put a defensive line-up we expect the line-up to play with a clean sheet in the first match and not only every three matches.

‘If you arrive in elite-level football, if you arrive in the highest level, if you play for Chelsea there is no time to perform. The time simply does not exist and you are constantly in a competition with other players in your team, on a friendly and a very respectful basis, and there is not time to have four or five or six matches in a row until you can score regularly.

‘This is not a secret, this is a given, and so we are trying to put the players in a good mindset, we are pushing them and we are working hard with the whole team. We did some changes because we needed to adapt and the results are not so crazy bad that we should ask ourselves if we do everything wrong here.’To emphasis that point, Tuchel stresses the team at Leeds at the weekend created enough touches in the box, had enough deliveries and created enough chances and half-chances to win the game very comfortably.‘We need to be more precise, we need to focus better on our position-making, and on the technique, how to finish,’ he adds.

‘These are the points we work on and our strikers are very aware of that, and they have the highest demands of themselves. We are not pointing fingers. Inside Cobham we blame nobody but we speak about the points very clearly on where we are good and what we can improve, and we can clearly improve on finishing.’The boss has also spoken specifically about claims one of the strikers, Timo Werner, is unsettled, with time again featuring in Tuchel’s response.‘Timo has no reason now to be frustrated,’ he points out, ‘because he did an amazing match against Liverpool, maybe his best match since I arrived, and then he had a good match against Everton, with a lot of chances to score which he is normally clinical enough and strong enough for.‘He did not score and okay, this sticks in a situation like this, this can affect his self-confidence, but the clear advice from us is don’t focus on the result, focus on the process, get your decision-making right, get your technique right, take good decisions, for the decisions take the right technique and the ball will do the rest.

‘There is simply no time to reflect on what there is going to be in summer and next year. There is simply no time and at the moment I don’t see why he should be frustrated.‘We gave him a little bit of time to breath against Leeds, it was hard for him to come on so he was not too much involved in the last 20 minutes because it was not our best game, and right now I don’t see why he should be too frustrated. Nobody here is blaming the strikers, it is a team effort to attack and a team effort to defend, but we expect our guys to create more chances and to be more decisive because we expect the defenders to play on their highest levels, so we also expect our strikers to.‘In the end it is my responsibility to put them in the right mindset and in the right positions, to let them play regularly and from then on we go. Then maybe all the stuff people read [about Werner being unsettled] will hopefully disappear soon.’

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