Tuchel leaps to the defence of Werner after returning to Chelsea starting line-up | OneFootball

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·28 November 2021

Tuchel leaps to the defence of Werner after returning to Chelsea starting line-up

Article image:Tuchel leaps to the defence of Werner after returning to Chelsea starting line-up

Thomas Tuchel has defender Timo Werner after his performance against Manchester United on Sunday.

In his first start for Chelsea in over a month, Werner missed two big chances in the 1-1 draw.


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Asked about Werner's performance, Tuchel told reporters: "I think that we still see that Timo hasn't played for a long time. So can we expect that he is on his absolute peak? No, we cannot. So it's always a bit of what can we expect in this moment.

"He looked very sharp in training, scored many goals in the last two training sessions. That's why I went with my gut and put him on the pitch and hoped that he could maybe hurt the two central defenders.

"It was a decision for Timo because he looked really sharp and had the goal against Juventus so we thought maybe he could be decisive or the big threat in the middle. It wasn't easy for him today and you could see that he clearly lacks some games and from here we go.

"If Romelu's fully fit he's a starter for us but he's not in the moment. It was more than I actually wanted to use him but the game was so close to the opponent's goal that we thought he could help with this, pushing, maybe one last touch. We were lacking a bit of a threat in the middle of the goal."

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