First real test for Tuchel's Chelsea, but perhaps a needed test?
How Chelsea react now is absolutely crucial
Chelsea suffered a thrashing from West Brom on Saturday in their own backyard in a performance and result that can only be described as an embarrassment and disgrace.
The players dropped heads and absolutely folded, as we have so often seen them do in recent years.
Players mentalities when things are not going their way has been a constant problem for any manager trying to manage them, as I write about here.
I have been fully onboard the Tuchel train and I intend to stay onboard. But amongst all the positivity surrounding our 14 games un-beaten run since he took charge before Saturday, there have been the negative thoughts still sitting very distantly in the back of my mind.
Questions such as, is our attack good enough? Are the new players going to settle quick enough to help effect this season? Are some of them even good enough? What happens when we finally lose a game, have the players mentalities improved?
Well, those last couple of questions are absolutely crucial right now to how the rest of the season will go for this club, and for Tuchel in his first season as a Premier League manager.
How Chelsea react now against Porto on Wednesday night will tell us a lot about their characters, and their togetherness off the back of reports of more training ground bust-ups and various disagreements between players. It will show us whether we have improved as much as it looks like we have since Frank Lampard was sacked.
I feel that many of us fans had those very slight doubts in our minds despite maintaining positivity and enjoying our winning run. And now we get a good opportunity to address these doubts after such a heavy loss and reports of player fallouts.
A good performance and a good result on Wednesday will help ease the doubts and the tension, and it will also show us just how good Tuchel’s man-management skills are as he tries to steady the ship once again.
Written by Simon Phillips (@siphillipssport)