Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel has explained why Tammy Abraham is absent from his squad this evening.
The Blues are in action against Manchester City in the FA Cup semi-final, and striker Abraham was left out of both the starting XI and the bench.
Abraham has now played since late February after suffering an ankle injury, but he did return to the bench for the Premier League win against Crystal Palace and the Champions League clash with FC Porto.
Today, he has not even made the bench, and Tuchel has explained that his omission does not involve any injury setback for the striker, something Chelsea fans will have feared.
"There isn’t much on Tammy [Abraham] but he’s lost a little bit of confidence recently and we’ve taken the hard decision to leave him out today," explained Tuchel to the Chelsea website.
"It was a tough decision but we decided to go with Timo [Werner], and with Kai [Havertz] and Oli Giroud from the bench. We have other injured players missing today, which would mean even more hard decisions."
Ahead of the game, Tuchel also spoke to BBC and he was asked about his approach and how he views the game philosophically.
“I like to attack, almost all of our time we spend it thinking about how we can score and how we can win the ball back as high as possible," he said.
"For me, it’s about attacking the goal, attacking the space in the box and attacking the opponent when we don’t have the ball.
“The funny thing is, we spend maybe 10% of our daily work on defensive movements, on defensive patterns.
"We started as kids with the ball under our arm and wanting to play, I never met one of my friends on the playground and said, ‘Today, I only want to defend’.
"Everyone wants to play, everyone wants to have the ball and score. I truly believe that this game is about attacking and having the ball. At the same time, I strongly believe in a structure, even during the attacks to be ready to win the ball back."
