Kai Havertz has suggested that Chelsea have made mistakes this season, risking upsetting the club's hierarchy by claiming the sacking of Thomas Tuchel has had a negative impact on the club's fortunes this season.
Tuchel was relieved of his duties in September 2022, after a defeat to Dinamo Zagreb in the Champions League. However, with disagreements at the top, there were believed to be a range of factors contributing to the departure of the former PSG and Borussia Dortmund manager, who has since taken over at Bayern Munich.
Havertz enjoyed a successful Chelsea career with Tuchel at the helm, scoring the winning goal in the 2021 Champions League final against Manchester City. He was also picked as the leading striker ahead of Romelu Lukaku on a number of occasions last season, scoring 14 goals in all competitions under the management of his compatriot.
However, since then, Havertz has had a difficult season and he has cited the departure of Tuchel as a factor in the team's collective struggles. The German playmaker has often been used from the bench, with all three Blues managers struggling to find a consistent starting XI, with the lack of a striker clearly a problem as just 30 Premier League goals have been scored.
“Everything that can go wrong went wrong for us this year,” Havertz said in an interview with German publication Kicker. "The season actually started relatively quietly. We had a change of ownership, which was a big change for the whole club. And then Thomas Tuchel was fired, which of course always makes a difference in a team like this when you've been successful with a coach and then gets fired out of nowhere."
"Of course it's easy to find excuses. I'm not a fan of blaming everything on something else. At the end of the day, we're all professional footballers and we have to win a game sometimes."
A year after the takeover of Boehly, Chelsea sit in 12th place in the Premier League, with three managers so far in his first full season in charge of the club. The £600 million also spent has been a source of criticism, with Boehly himself admitting at a recent event that mistakes had been made during his first 12 months at the helm.
Havertz is one of many players who have been a victim of the club's bloated squad, with the Athletic reporting in April that during Graham Potter's time in charge players had to sit on the floor and change in the corridors at their Cobham training ground. Such issues have also been cited by defender Thiago Silva, who has claimed that a strategy needs to be put into place moving forwards in West London.
