Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has met his 10-man side’s shock 5-2 Premier League capitulation at the hands of relegation battlers West Brom with a calm response.
Tuchel tasted defeat for the first time at the Stamford Bridge helm, with his club-record 14-match unbeaten start coming to a crushing end.
Tuchel insisted Thiago Silva’s 29th-minute red card for a second booking turned the game but the German manager also conceded the Blues were off colour throughout a dispiriting defeat.
Refusing to read the riot act in the dressing room at fulltime, Tuchel insisted he would delay any lengthy post mortem until Sunday’s training session at the Blues’ Cobham headquarters.
“We cannot lose our heads now and take away the trust we have in these players,” said Tuchel.
“It was the moment after the game to be honest, be calm and to tell everybody to breathe.
“This will be a hard evening for everybody.
“We had completely different plans how to start this match day so we have to accept it now, it’s our first loss together.
“It’s important to find a way to deal with it together.
“This is my responsibility. I trusted this line-up and I still think the line-up was strong enough now in this game.
“We were rusty, we were sloppy in the build-up in our own half and made many, many unforced errors.”
Matheus Pereira’s fine brace sparked West Brom’s stunning west London rout, inflicting Chelsea’s first defeat since January 19.
Baggies manager Sam Allardyce hailed a victory which gives the men from The Hawthorns an outside chance of Premier League survival.
“It just gives us hope, I think that perhaps on the quality of the performance and the way we demolished Chelsea, perhaps it gives us a little bit more than hope,” said Allardyce.
“It keeps us going, it keeps us alive.”