Tuchel on Lukaku’s case: “Tomorrow we will make a decision on Romelu’s return” | Premier League

He wasn’t there, but the match between Chelsea and Liverpool revolved almost entirely around Romelu Lukaku.

After that, most questions revolved around the position of the attacker. Coach Thomas Tuchel presented the same defense for both the TV channels and the press conference.

“Romelo is our player and there will always be a way back,” the coach said. “We will resolve this behind closed doors. We first want to assess the situation and understand the reason for Romelu’s particular statements. That is why we will meet tomorrow (Monday, Editor). Then we will decide if he is ready to play on Wednesday.”

According to Tuchel, that was not possible against Liverpool. “Because all the noise around the match threatened to lose focus on the match. We wanted to protect Romelu by not making a hasty decision and talking to him.”

Tuchel showed no mercy towards the standard conversion earlier in the day.

After the decisive encounter with Lukaku, the German did not count on him in the first match against Liverpool.

But at first, it seemed that the German coach could frame Lukaku’s comments. He thought it was an “unnecessary distraction”, but immediately added that “we shouldn’t make it any more than it is. It’s easy to take some statements out of context, when in fact they’re not that bad and not what they mean.”

Especially because the interview with Lukaku took place about a month ago, just as he had just come back from an injury. The Red Devil had mainly hoped to fix things with Inter fans, but he privately scolded his current employer.

After a personal conversation with Lukaku, Tuchel now comes up with a statement – which reads: No one is greater than a coach – to leave his attacker out of choice.

On the club’s website, Tuchel defended his choice to leave Lukaku out of the squad: “We spoke twice and Romelu did the same with the key players. After that we realized that the issue became too big and too loud, too close to the game we had to protect our preparations. It was a tough decision. But it had to be taken.”

The case comes at a particularly inopportune time for both parties. Lukaku has just reappeared in London after a difficult few months. Without his number 9, Chelsea now have to search for a crucial hat-trick against Liverpool to stay in the title race.

Meanwhile, a preview of the match at US NBC puts Lukaku in an even more difficult position. While on the bench, the forward dressed up with his former Everton teammate Tim Howard – currently an NBC analyst.

According to a brief presenter, Lukaku is said to have said the “situation is hot” and “he could say more after another meeting on Monday”.

I hope they didn’t hear that at Chelsea…