Sacked Tuchel criticizes self for Zagreb defeat as Cole calls out Koulibaly, Ziyech

Former Chelsea winger Joe Cole has highlighted two of the Blues' weak links after Thomas Tuchel's side lost 1-0 away to Dinamo Zagreb in their opening Champions League group stage game on Tuesday. 

Mislav Orsic scored the only goal of the match in the first half after a swift counterattack, and Chelsea were unable to find a way past Dominik Livakovic in the Croatian side's goal.

Cole called out two players specifically after the loss. "Well where do you start?" Cole told BT Sport. "They need to pull it together as soon as they can. There were countless instances where [Kalidou] Koulibaly was caught on the wrong side and for a 31-year-old defender he needs to really get up to speed of playing in the Champions League and the Premier League regularly.

"I think on the other end of the pitch, there is a lack of confidence beginning to develop, we are talking about lack of goals and assists. The only positive for Thomas Tuchel once the dust settles is that there will be lots of players knocking at his door saying why aren’t I playing and wanting to be given a chance.

"Those players have come in to tonight and given a chance and have not taken it, so at least you can say to them, I am not playing you and showing them the clips. [Hakim] Ziyech has a lot of talent, but it is just not clicking for him at Chelsea so it’s a disappointing night for the club, a shock result."

The sacked Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel also admitted he did not see the Blues' shock Champions League defeat at Dinamo Zagreb coming and that everything is missing from his side.

Tuchel delivered a scathing assessment, which included self-criticism, after Chelsea were stunned in Zagreb by the Croatian champions.

And he bemoaned the ‘same story’ as his side lost for the third time this season in just seven games.

He said: ‘I’m angry with myself and I’m angry with our performance. I’m angry with myself because I did not see it coming.

‘Obviously I was in the wrong movie. I thought that the last game helped us. I thought we showed a reaction in a very difficult moment against West Ham, got the reaction, got the result in the moments when you need a bit of luck in the situation we were in.

 ‘We had good training sessions, I thought the team was prepared, I thought we know what this is all about. I didn’t see it coming, that’s why I’m angry with myself.’

Tuchel’s 100th game in charge of Chelsea turned out to be an occasion to forget and he added: ‘There is too much to analyse — I’m a part of it. We’re clearly not there where we need to be and where we can be, so it’s on me it’s on us. At the moment everything is missing.

‘This is a huge underperformance from all of us. It’s not precise enough, not clinical enough, not aggressive enough.

‘It’s not determined enough and not enough as a team and that’s why we lost.’

Asked how many players were at the top of their game, Tuchel said: ‘Not a lot at the moment. It’s for me to find the solution and find the reason why.

‘Obviously they are underperforming individually and I don’t really know where this performance comes from.

‘A lack of determination, a lack of hunger and a lack of intensity to do the things we need at the highest level. We are clearly not where we want to be.

‘We expected what we got. It was the same story of the last few games — we start OK for 15-20 minutes but then lacked determination, precision and maybe even lacked the smell of blood.

‘We need to be much better. We are not finished, we are not happy with our results, we are not happy with the way we play in general, but I thought we were on a good way. I’m surprised by this performance’.

When it was put to Tuchel, who has accused his players of being too easy to beat already this season, that they shrank against Dinamo after going behind, he said: ‘It’s hard to argue against it, if it seemed like this then this is how it is. You can analyse it like this, of course.’