Thomas Tuchel has defended his decision to leave out Tammy Abraham from his FA Cup final squad following the defeat to Leicester on Saturday.
Abraham has fallen out of favour under the German since his appointment in January, and despite being the Blues’ top scorer in the competition, he was left out of the squad completely for the 1-0 defeat at Wembley.
Getty
Speculation has subsequently been rife about Abraham’s future at Stamford Bridge, with West Ham and Brighton linked with a summer transfer for the 23-year-old.
Tuchel, however, has moved to defend his omission of the player and said he simply had to leave someone out due to the nature of his big squad.
Asked why Abraham missed out on Saturday, Tuchel replied: “Well it’s just the amount of people that I can nominate for a game.
“I decided to start Timo Werner in the number nine role, so we had Kai Havertz and Olivier Giroud on the bench, so we decided not to have three number nines on the bench. This is it, it’s never personal.
Getty
“When Mateo Kovacic and Andreas Christensen, maybe, come back into the squad, I need to figure out the squad and maybe eliminate two more players.
“This is the worst day and the worst decision for me in the whole week.
“Because since I arrived here everybody deserves to be in the squad.
“I understand his frustration and it was not the first time, and we have other guys with the same situation to face.
“This is not the moment to complain, and this is not the moment to explain too much. This is the moment just to live in the moment.
“These are the two decisive weeks now of the whole season.”
Abraham is a proven goal-scorer and a host of Premier League clubs are said to be interested in signing him this summer.
One of those, according to talkSPORT’s transfer guru Alex Crook, is Brighton and he reckons Abraham could fire the Seagulls to a European spot if he seals a switch to the south coast.
He told talkSPORT: “I don’t think it’s too fanciful that if Brighton did break the bank and did get a proper no.9, a goal-scoring forward, a Tammy Abraham, for example, that it would shatter their transfer record.
“It’s possibly unlikely but If you put Abraham in this team they could challenge for Europe themselves.”
from Football - news, transfers, fixtures, scores, pictures https://ift.tt/3uUh1ix
via IFTTT
No Comment