When Thomas Tuchel arrived at Chelsea in January 2021, there were some raised eyebrows and curiosity as to whether the German could succeed where his predecessor, club legend Frank Lampard, had arguably failed.
It did not take long for Tuchel to do as another German coach had done on arrival in England and turn doubters into believers, leading the Blues to a top four finish (just), an FA Cup final and a Champions League triumph.
However, with the 48-year-old set to celebrate a year in charge at Stamford Bridge next week, he is experiencing perhaps his first rocky period in England, having won just one of his last seven Premier League games and sitting 12 points behind leaders Manchester City having played a game more.
Before Tuchel blows out the candles on his anniversary cake, Stats Perform has taken a look at his first year at Chelsea to try and figure out how much of a success it has been, and where things may go from here.
Welcome to the Premier League
In appointing Tuchel, who had been out of work since leaving Paris Saint Germain a month prior, Chelsea may have been trying to capture the lightning in a bottle that rivals Liverpool had when hiring Jurgen Klopp a few years earlier.
Tuchel's journey to England was eerily similar to Klopp's, aside from a stop in France, with an unremarkable playing career eventually leading to a management opportunity at Bundesliga outfit Mainz, via Augsburg's second team, and then on to Borussia Dortmund.
It was almost an impossible job to follow 'Kloppo' at Signal Iduna Park but Tuchel did well enough to catch the eye of PSG, where he won two league titles, two domestic cups and reached the 2020 Champions League final, before being sacked after a poor start to the Ligue 1 season.
He even began life in the Premier League with a 0-0 draw in his first game against Wolves, just as Klopp did against Tottenham, but from there you could see the shoots of improvement fairly rapidly, winning his next four and conceding only one goal.
In fact, Chelsea conceded just twice in Tuchel's 10-game unbeaten start in the Premier League, before a barely believable 5-2 home defeat to ultimately relegated West Brom.
They recovered to win five of their last eight league games, although a 2-1 defeat at Aston Villa on the last day of the season meant they were reliant on Tottenham for a favour, with Spurs duly obliging as they beat Leicester.
A promising start to the 2021-22 season saw the Blues lead the way, winning eight of their first 10 games, only dropping points to title rivals Liverpool and Manchester City.
However, since a 2-1 win at Watford at the start of December that even Mason Mount admitted was "one of our worst [performances] so far with the manager", Chelsea's form has plummeted, winning just two of their nine league games since, which has seen them fall well behind City.
The 1-1 draw at Brighton and Hove Albion on Tuesday was Tuchel's 42nd league game since arriving, with his record standing at 23 wins, 13 draws and six defeats.
When compared to previous Chelsea managers in the Premier League era who have also reached 42 league games, some of Tuchel's numbers are surprisingly lacklustre.
His win percentage of 55 is well below that of Jose Mourinho (79), Antonio Conte (79) and Carlo Ancelotti (74), and only Lampard (52) had a worse win percentage at this stage of managers who arrived at the club after Roman Abramovich took ownership in 2003.
He has lost the same number of games as Conte and Ancelotti (six), but no Chelsea manager in the Premier League era has drawn more than Tuchel's 13 after 42 games.
Goals scored has been an issue as only the teams of Glenn Hoddle (49) and Gianluca Vialli (63) scored fewer goals in their first 42 games in charge, but he has clearly tightened things up at the back with only Mourinho (15) conceding fewer than Tuchel's 31 goals against.
That said, only Pep Guardiola (2.48) and Klopp (2.00) can boast a superior points per game records in the Premier League since Tuchel (1.95) arrived, so you could argue that form is merely relative to the standard of competition.
Pressing matters
Under Lampard in the first half of the 2020-21 season, Chelsea ranked 13th in the league for high turnovers, but in the second half after Tuchel had arrived, they moved up to eighth.
So far this season for the same metric they sit fifth, behind only Liverpool, City, Brighton and Southampton, so while it has not necessarily become their defined tactic, their pressing has improved markedly under Tuchel.
The emergence of Reece James and Ben Chilwell also allowed Tuchel to utilise his favoured three at the back system, and to good effect as he has managed to get an impressive amount of goal involvements out of his wing backs.
Before their respective injuries earlier this season, James managed five goals and seven assists in 52 appearances under the German on the right, while Chilwell got five goals and three assists in 32 appearances from the left. Marcos Alonso has six goal involvements (G3 A3) from 41 games.
In terms of the Premier League, no defenders have scored more than James or Chilwell (four), which is particularly impressive for the latter as he has played just 17 times in the league under Tuchel, while only Liverpool duo Trent Alexander-Arnold (107) and Andrew Robertson (58) as well as Manchester United's Luke Shaw (73) have created more chances than James (54).
One night in Porto
Say what you will about Roman Abramovich's penchant for sacking managers, last year marked the second time he has installed a new one part-way through a season and ended up with a Champions League trophy in his cabinet.
Tuchel followed in the footsteps of Roberto Di Matteo in 2012 by only having to navigate the knockout stages, impressively getting past Atletico Madrid, Porto and Real Madrid before a tactical masterclass saw them overcome Manchester City 1-0 in the final.
It is no wonder that optimism was so high heading into this season, despite a disappointing 1-0 loss to Leicester City in the FA Cup final, and it seemed reasonable to think there was only one more piece to add to the puzzle.
The Lukaku conundrum
The reason many were tipping Chelsea to push Manchester City all the way in the Premier League this season was mostly based on the balance that Tuchel had in his team.
An exceptional goalkeeper in Edouard Mendy, an experienced backline including Cesar Azpilicueta, Thiago Silva and Antonio Rudiger, almost every kind of central midfielder a coach could dream of with Jorginho, N'Golo Kante, Mateo Kovacic and Mount among others to choose from, while a young and promising attacking line including Callum Hudson-Odoi, Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner and Kai Havertz was supplemented by £97m man Romelu Lukaku.
Where were the weaknesses? Well in a twist that very few saw coming, it was in the returning Belgian.
In fairness to Lukaku, who was brought back to Stamford Bridge after registering 30 goals and 11 assists in 44 games in all competitions last year for Inter, he started well enough as he bagged four goals in his first four games back, while also getting three in two for his country during the season's first international break.
However, things have gone downhill since then, with Lukaku going 10 games without a goal between September and December and scoring just four goals in his last 19 appearances for the Blues, one of which was in the 5-1 FA Cup third round win against non-league Chesterfield.
It is not just the lack of goals, though. Lukaku's style of play seems entirely unsuited to what Tuchel is trying to achieve.
He thrived at Inter playing in a partnership with Lautaro Martinez, but does not look anything like the same player in Tuchel's system that uses one central striker, something that Lukaku himself acknowledged in a recent interview when he indicated frustration at the manager's use of him.
Manager and player seemed to bury the hatchet, only for Tuchel to lambast Lukaku again after his showing in the 1-0 defeat to Manchester City that all but ended their hopes of the title.
"[Lukaku] had many ball losses without any pressure, many ball losses in very promising circumstances. He had a huge chance," the Blues boss said after the game.
"We want to serve him, but he is part of the team, and the performance up front, particularly in the first half, we can do much, much better."
Next steps
Almost a year into the job, it feels like a mostly positive experience for both is reaching a crossroads. Chelsea have no doubt improved under Tuchel, but their recent form has been concerning and we're now just waiting to see if it is a blip or simply form reverting to the mean.
If the German is to get things back on track you feel the key lies with the Lukaku situation. Either he somehow makes the former Everton and Manchester United striker work – and he has already stated he won't change the style of the team to do so – or he opts for a different approach.
His biggest achievement and definitive performance since arriving at Stamford Bridge was the Champions League win, and the difference in performances from Havertz, striker that night and scorer of the winning goal, and Lukaku's showing against the same opposition last week was night and day.
That is one big decision to make, but another area where Tuchel might be looking to evolve his team lies with Mount, arguably his most impressive player during the last year.
The 23-year-old has had more goal involvements than anyone else since Tuchel arrived (22, G13 A9) and the England international is the only attacker in the top 10 players with the most minutes clocked under Tuchel (4,025).
However, Mount was curiously left on the bench for the trip to City, where Tuchel explained: "We were simply opting for runners. We thought we could break the line more often with Hakim [Ziyech] as a left foot on the left side and going for Christian [Pulisic] as a right side because of the arrival of Christian in the box.
"Normally, he is a bit more offensive, a bit more of a runner than Mason and we expected the spaces more behind the last line and not in front of the back four from City. So that was the decision."
It was a curious decision, but was perhaps a way of trying to tempt a bit more out of Mount in terms of his running.
Tuchel has already achieved more than many thought he would at this stage, reaching an FA Cup final, lifting the Champions League and European Super Cup, and recently winning the FIFA Best coach of the year award.
However, if he wants to one day be in the conversation to be among the Mount Rushmore of Chelsea managers, maybe unlocking his team's full potential is as simple as making Mount rush more.
Gravenberch ready to show off Liverpool form ‘to the world’, says Gakpo
Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo expressed his pride in seeing compatriot Ryan Gravenberch show off his qualities ‘to the whole world’ after a fine start to the Premier League season.
Though the Netherlands pair did not become teammates at Liverpool until late summer of 2023, Gakpo knew well Gravenberch’s talents from their respective Eredivisie spells with PSV Eindhoven and Ajax.
Now in his second season at Anfield, Gravenberch has drawn widespread plaudits for his form in a new deeper-lying midfield role under new head coach Arne Slot, having largely been used as a substitute under Jurgen Klopp.
Gravenberch is the only midfielder in Europe's big-five leagues to both make 30+ tackles (30) and 30+ interceptions (33) in all competitions this season, and Gakpo insisted that his Netherlands team-mate can continue to go from strength to strength, starting against Southampton this Sunday.
“We [the Dutchmen at Liverpool] knew Ryan already from the Eredivisie when he played at Ajax, and I think everybody knew already that he is this good,” Gakpo recently told Men in Blazers.
“After that, he made a move to Bayern Munich, and maybe he didn’t play that much over there, but still everybody in Holland knew how good he could be when he was playing.
“And I think maybe the manager [Slot] also knew this. At the beginning of the season, he put him in a slightly different position, but he gave him the confidence to play there.
“Ryan showed his quality in that position, grabbed his chance as well and turned out to be a good match. He is playing outstandingly for us this season.
“I’m very happy that we can see Ryan, as we Dutchmen already knew, but now he can show it to the whole world. I’m very proud of him.”
Southampton, meanwhile, welcome the Reds to St. Mary’s on the back of a 2-0 defeat to Wolves ahead of the international break, leaving them bottom of the table after 11 games of the season.
The Saints are the lowest scorers in the Premier League this season (seven), while only Crystal Palace (5.1%) have a lower shot conversion rate than Russell Martin’s side (6.2%). Just 30.1% of Southampton’s shots have been on target this term (34/113), a league-low ratio.
However, the Southampton head coach is relishing the opportunity of facing Liverpool, with his players performing well against the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City already this term.
"I'm really excited about Sunday. We're playing the best team in the country at the moment, on their current form and what they have been doing with their manager, built on an incredible foundation from the previous manager, so I'm really looking forward to it,” Martin said.
"I think we showed the guys the Premier League table last season and how much it changed by the end and by the end of December. But it's honestly such an exciting month.
"People talk about the difficulty of the game and every competition we face in the next four or five games, but it's what we all worked so hard for. We should be excited about the challenge.
“I think teams have shown in the last few weeks that you can pick up big results against big teams, good opposition, and we are going to have to. Our level of performance against teams at the top end of the table has been good on the whole."
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Southampton – Mateus Fernandes
Fernandes has become a mainstay in the Southampton team, starting the last eight Premier League games in a row, and has been one of Martin’s standout performers in a lacklustre start to the campaign.
In the Saints’ 2-0 defeat to Wolves last time out, the Portuguese contributed a team-high expected goals (xG) tally of 0.22 from his three shots, while only Yukinari Sugawara (10) and Flynn Downes (12) have created more chances in the top-flight than Fernandes (eight) this season.
Liverpool – Mohamed Salah
Salah has both scored and assisted in the same match 35 times in the Premier League (including four already this term), just one shy of Wayne Rooney’s record of 36 games with both a goal and an assist in the competition. The Egyptian has been directly involved in 11 goals (seven goals, four assists) in 11 Premier League appearances against Southampton.
He has also been directly involved in 67% of Liverpool’s Premier League goals this season (14/21 – eight goals, six assists), the highest ratio by a player for any side in the division in 2024-25. Indeed, only Matt Le Tissier for Southampton in 1993-94 (69% - 34/49) has scored or assisted a higher proportion of a side’s goals in a single season in the competition.
MATCH PREDICTION: LIVERPOOL WIN
Liverpool have won nine of their 11 Premier League games under new head coach Slot (D1 L1). A win over Southampton will see the Dutchman become the joint-fastest manager to reach 10 wins from the start of a Premier League career (12 games), alongside Guus Hiddink in May 2009 and Carlo Ancelotti in November 2009 (both with Chelsea).
The Reds’ last Premier League game against the Saints was a 4-4 away draw in May 2023 – they conceded as many goals in that game as they had in their previous six visits to St Mary’s combined.
Southampton have won just one of their last 14 Premier League games against Liverpool (D3 L10), a 1-0 home victory in January 2021.
This will also be the first Premier League match between the side starting the day bottom of the table and the side starting the day top since April 2023, and Southampton’s 3-3 draw away to Arsenal. The league leaders are unbeaten in 14 such matches (W12 D2) since Wolves won 2-1 against Manchester United in February 2011.
However, Southampton have only lost one of their last eight Premier League home games against sides starting the day at the summit (W2 D5) and are unbeaten in their last four (W2 D2 – including a 1-0 win over Liverpool in January 2021) since a 0-1 defeat to Man City in May 2018.
But Martin’s side have lost nine of their 11 Premier League games this season (W1 D1). Only seven sides in English top-flight history have reached 10 defeats in 12 or fewer matches from the start of a campaign, with all seven going on to be relegated.
OPTA WIN PROBABILITY
Southampton – 9.7%
Draw – 12.6%
Liverpool – 77.7%
Taylor proud of 'gritty' Man City display in Hammarby victory
Gareth Taylor was pleased with how his Manchester City players handled the atmosphere against Hammarby to secure their passage into the Champions League quarter-finals.
Khadija Shaw opened the scoring in the 31st minute before Ellen Wangerheim restored parity shortly after the interval with a finish from close range.
But Shaw continued her fine start to the campaign, scoring the winner to become City's all-time top scorer in the competition, surpassing Georgia Stanway and Janine Beckie (both six).
The result saw City make it to the last eight of the competition for the first time since 2021, though the encounter was far from comfortable at the Tele2 Arena on Thursday.
Hammarby ended the contest with an expected goals (xG) total of 2.15 compared to the visitors' 1.07, despite both sides having 14 shots throughout the match.
However, City maintained their unbeaten record against Swedish sides in the competitor (W6), and Taylor was proud of his side's "gritty" display in Stockholm.
“I’m really pleased. It was about qualification for us tonight," Taylor said.
"There were a couple of ways we could do it. Obviously, we knew a point was enough, but I don’t think the players were thinking that way.
“It was a really gritty performance on a really difficult on this pitch. It probably doesn’t look like that for the viewers at home watching it.
"But it was a really lively surface and we worked so hard.
“I felt there were some areas we could control the play better. I have to give credit to Hammarby, they were really aggressive.
"The referee was on our side a little bit in the first half and maybe not in the second.
“I’m really pleased and proud of the players, they really dug in tonight. You come away from a hostile environment with a win.”
McKenna fired up for 'biggest game in world football' against Man United
Kieran McKenna believes Ipswich Town's Premier League clash with Manchester United will be the "biggest game in world football" this weekend.
United are in action under new manager Ruben Amorim for the first time since the Portuguese officially replaced Arne Slot as head coach.
While plenty of focus is on the visitors at Portman Road, Ipswich are fired up after beating Tottenham 2-1 before the international break.
That was Ipswich's first league win of the season – and their first in the Premier League in 22 years – and now attention turns to facing United.
McKenna, who previously coached United, said at a fan event this week: "Sunday, what a game. It's one we're really, really looking forward to.
"Not for the personal connection, but as manager of Ipswich Town, to be on that stage, it's what we've worked so hard for.
"It's the biggest game in world football anywhere this weekend, the biggest game in the world in the biggest sport in the world and it's at Portman Road."
Ipswich's surprise win at Tottenham last time out moved them up to 17th, while United are 13th after beating Leicester City 3-0 in Ruud van Nistelrooy's final game in caretaker charge.
Amorim took his first training session on Monday, albeit with many first-team stars away on international duty, and the former Sporting CP boss believes his style of play will be clear to see from the off.
"I think you will see an idea," he told the club's website. "You could like it or not, I don't know, but you will see an idea.
"You will see a positioning. You will see something that we want to reach that kind of level. You will feel that.
"We have to know it's [only] two trainings before the first match. This is the best league in the world. But if I have to say something to you, [it's that] you will see an idea. This I can guarantee."
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Ipswich Town - Liam Delap
Delap scored what proved to be Ipswich's winner against Tottenham and has now netted six of his side's 12 Premier League goals this term.
That makes the Manchester City academy product one of only three players to have scored at least half of his side's goals in the competition this season, along with Erling Haaland at City (55%) and Chris Wood at Nottingham Forest (53%).
Manchester United - Alejandro Garnacho
Garnacho was among the scorers against Leicester two weeks ago and has now been directly involved in 20 Premier League goals for United (13 goals and seven assists).
The Argentina international is one of only two non-British players to reach that figure for United before turning 21, along with Cristiano Ronaldo (25 goals).
MATCH PREDICTION: MANCHESTER UNITED WIN
Ipswich are seeking back-to-back Premier League wins for the first time since February 2022, with that run also beginning with a 2-1 victory against Tottenham.
The Tractor Boys are the only side in the competition without a home win this season. Only five newly promoted clubs have failed to win any of their first six home matches, all of whom went back down.
United have won 17 of their past 19 Premier League games against newly promoted opponents, meanwhile, including nine wins in a row in away fixtures.
The Red Devils were 1-0 winners on their most recent league trip to Portman Road in April 2022, but only once have they won successive league games away to Ipswich.
However, the Tractor Boys have lost four of their past five league matches against Man United, failing to score in each of those losses.
OPTA WIN PROBABILITY
Ipswich Town - 22.2%
Draw - 23%
Manchester United - 54.8%
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