With less than two weeks to go until Chelsea kick-off their Premier League season at Goodison Park against Everton, trepidation is the feeling that is lingering around the Blues camp at the moment with Thomas Tuchel amplifying this feeling.
The Blues' 4-0 thumping at the hands of Arsenal in the US was only a pre-season fixture but it certainly burst the bubble of positivity that was created by the purchases of Raheem Sterling and Kalidou Koulibaly. So much so that the German didn't hold back in his post-match assessment of what he saw on the pitch where he didn't just urge the board to sign more 'quality players' with four new additions forecasted before the September deadline but he also questioned whether his team would be ready to go back to a place where they were so easily beaten at the end of the 2021/22 campaign.
"I can not guarantee," he honestly said when asked whether his team would be ready for the start of the new season. "I saw today a team in Arsenal who are mentally committed to an idea of playing, a level of exhaustion, a level of physical commitment that we could not match. Also, a level of mental commitment that we lacked because we have a lot of players who are thinking about leaving and looking at their options. We have players that have left and I think at the moment that's obvious."
