Tuchel to Chelsea players: Forget records, just win games

Chelsea boss, Thomas Tuchel, has warned his players the next game always must be won.

While he has not yet tasted defeat in 13 games since arriving at Stamford Bridge in January.

But as proud as he is of that achievement, ahead of Sunday’s FA Cup quarter-final with Sheffield United he has been keen to stress to his players that a single, solitary victory is all that matters rather than anything that has gone before it.

Tuchel said: “I spoke many, years ago here in London to the leader of the cycling team of Sky, Sir Dave Brailsford, who won the Tour de France a few times.

“And he was very, very concerned about not wanting to enter a state of mind where you fear the loss of a record more than the hunger and adventure of winning the next race.

“I don’t want to enter this, either, so the refocus is always part of the process.

“If we look too much at what we have achieved, that ‘we protect this, what we have’… this is already in the past.

“If it’s 13, 14, 15 or whatever we can make it, it doesn’t matter.

“It matters because it’s natural that it sometimes affects you and maybe you step back and want to protect it, and you maybe enter the next game thinking, ‘Let’s not ruin this’.

“But I always want us to be brave and to refocus, to go for the next win and not to avoid the loss that kills our record.

read also:Tuchel delighted with Giroud form

“The record is already history.

“The next game with Sheffield United is one game and this is the most important.

“What do we have to do in the first minute and the fifth minute and the 90th minute?

“What are we good at, what do we demand of ourselves?

“Not in general that we demand that we win.

“No, we demand that in the first minute we start like this and play like this and we have this kind of intensity and this kind of attitude and this kind of team spirit and from there on we go.

“And then I demand from myself and the team and everybody the maximum and then we will see, because if we have all this then it is possible to have big records.

“But I hope we don’t enter situations where we are more afraid of losing the record than of winning the next game.”