📣 Tuchel on fitness, Werner and Havertz, non-stop fixtures and CHO | OneFootball

Chelsea managed to get through to the FA Cup quarter-finals on Thursday night but there’s no time to rest.

Thomas Tuchel was back in front of the media on Friday morning and here’s what he had to say …

On fitness updates and Havertz

“I don’t think it was concussion related (Christensen’s injury).

“Should be absolutely OK for Timo. Maybe too soon for Kai and for Thiago.

“I am pretty sure we will see [the Leverkusen Havertz], there is no short answer though. What we know is there is all this potential in him and he can show it on the pitch.

“For every transfer, change of club, every player is different. Some players need more time to adapt, sometimes it is a process. All we can do is push him, support him and give him what he needs. He had a good start with us, good matches and I have a feeling that he is a guy who is clear, self-aware, humble and very talented. There are no doubts he will show this.

“Hopefully he can come back in the next days because I am confident he can have a big impact.”

On struggling to beat Barnsley

“It was hard to overcome their pressing line, we struggled for the 45 minutes. Between 45 and 75 was our best period but still, in the last 15 minutes, we had trouble to deal with the pressure and physical style of Barnsley in the last minutes that gave us an awkward feeling.

“We will allow ourselves to be honest if we don’t like the performance. If we ever have a top game and we don’t win, we will show good things.

“There are things to do better and in general, I don’t want to be too harsh and I still want to stick to that. There was a lack of rhythm and confidence, the opponent played a very tough match too.

On non-stop fixtures

“Every coach in the world wants to have maybe four weeks with a new team to know their habits and characteristics but maybe the good thing was that we didn’t think about it because we didn’t have time to.

“Always, this is what we think about most of the time at Cobham, how much impact do we get, how many formations do we put in but in the end, less is more.

“It is constant management for us, sometimes we also leave them alone to let them process the new movements or new approach. This is normal, we talk a lot and it is a constant management, it will never stop. It will be like this during the next months.”

On Hudson-Odoi

If you have a specialist in the six then he will play as a six but if you have players like Callum and the opportunity to ask different questions to the opponents, why not use it. He started on the right side and finished on the left so it gives us the possibility to be flexible to help the team structure wise.

On academy players

The door is always open in my office for the coaches, officials from the academy. I love to watch their training, in-house games on the other pitches, which is unfortunately not allowed at the moment because we are in the bubble so it is a bit more difficult than usual. My belief is that is the backbone of any club, the more guys you have arrive in the first team, the better it is for the club.