Kai Havertz has said that Chelsea’s season started to head south after the club’s decision to sack Thomas Tuchel “out of nowhere.”
Tuchel was sacked in September after the Blues lost three of their first seven matches of the season. Though it wasn’t an ideal start, what has followed has been nothing short of disastrous.
Tuchel’s replacement Graham Potter lasted just seven months before he was sacked in April. Potter’s replacement, caretaker boss Frank Lampard, has done even worse, losing all five of his matches in charge so far.
Chelsea’s struggles have come amidst a season in which the club has invested heavily in the transfer market, spending hundreds of millions on the likes of Enzo Fernández, Benoît Badiashile, Mykhailo Mudryk, Noni Madueke and João Félix, among others.
1️⃣1️⃣ games lost during Thomas Tuchel's reign 💪
1️⃣1️⃣ games lost SINCE Thomas Tuchel departed 😬 pic.twitter.com/kbu2D0qmAU
— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) May 2, 2023
With Chelsea in 12th place and playing out the string before the offseason mercifully arrives, Havertz spoke to Sky Germany about the club’s issues in 2022-23.
“Everything that could go wrong went wrong for us this year. The season actually started relatively quietly even though we had a change of ownership, which was a big change for the whole club,” he said.
“And then Thomas Tuchel was fired, which of course always makes a big difference in a team like this when you’ve been successful with a coach and then he gets fired out of nowhere. We got a lot of new players over the winter who first have to settle in with us in order to be able to show their quality.
“Of course it’s easy to find excuses. I’m not blaming everything on something. At the end of the day, we’re all professional footballers and we have to win football games.
“Now we have our backs to the wall and aren’t doing very well in the table. We just have to do as well as possible from the last six games.”
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