Pre-season is a hard time to fully analyse performance. Matches aren't as quick or quality-filled as they should be, they often involve more than 40 players, good results against league rivals are put down to weak teams and it's all in a very unnatural environment.
It's a golden time for managers to assert team goals and spend quality time away from competitive matches to build an understanding for their team, but this hasn't been the way it's happened at Chelsea.
For seven years now the plans have verged from being logistically foiled to overly strict, and during a time of change, like almost every pre-season has been, there was just too much going on.
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This season was meant to be different, and to some extent it has been, but Thomas Tuchel looks like a man that is being tripped up by the same trick as his predecessors. Just like Jose Mourinho's Chelsea side in the summer of 2015 and Antonio Conte in 2017, the Blues have been sent on a cross-world expedition.
Although the USA trip looked to have some real footballing benefits for this squad, as well as commercial and marketing ones for Todd Boehly, it has so far been a struggle for the players as they are flown across to America. This itself isn't an excuse for the poor intensity shown so far on the tour, Tuchel has his own reasons for that, but when trying to build consistency and sharpness, long plane journey's aren't optimal.
The timing of this season's tour is also questionable, as the Blues start their league season in just 13 days and have only one more currently arranged game to be played. Their time in America was for three matches and all of them were in different stadiums, ranging across two training camps.
Other than the squad issues that are causing Tuchel problems, he has a historically small time period to work on his squad in. Partly down to the final block of Nations League matches held in June and also in tandem with a winter World Cup schedule, plus the ongoing effects that the Covid-19 pandemic is having on the footballing calendar, Tuchel had just 20 days between the first match of pre-season and the opening day of league football for his team.
Since 2014 this is the third lowest total. In 2015, with just a 16-day gap, the squad crumbled to a 10th placed finish as Jose Mourinho was sacked before Christmas. Not that the same is likely, but there are some worrying patterns that come from preseason that Tuchel needs to resolve.
The next one is that with just four official first team friendly matches scheduled, this is the joint-second lowest amount. In the other two seasons with four matches, Chelsea finished outside of the top four on both occasions.
The final comparison to be made is the tour setting itself. Although it is hard to make direct links to the location having an impact, Chelsea have been markedly better with European-based tours than they have when travelling further across the world.
In 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2019 the tour was largely based in Europe, resulting in two league wins, a third place and fourth place finish during the following campaigns. For every USA or Asia-based pre-season, the Blues have finished outside the top four.
Again, this isn't to say it is a direct causation, it's far from it, but Tuchel's summary of the tour does point towards tough conditions to be properly prepared. "It was long, it was long for sure," he said of the tour. "We could feel the energy level drop after Las Vegas and after the Charlotte game because of the amount of travelling, humidity, and very hot temperature. It made it tough because it's now been two weeks on the road.
"It's also a point but it’s a little point or explanation why we did not look fresh. I did not expect it today. I thought we lowered a little bit the intensity in training the last days, but not in a way where we could expect fresh legs. So that was not the biggest surprise, just the difference between tired and playing like this."
Chelsea will now return to England before playing their final official friendly against Serie A Udinese in Italy on Friday, July 29. This will give Tuchel time to reassess his squad, along with possible additions to the side, but he will still have to overcome a tough record of seasons following from poor pre-seasons.
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