Latest injury news ahead of the game?
Mateo Kovacic, N'Golo, Ben Chilwell and Trevoh Chalobah did not train today.
So they are all out for tomorrow, but everybody else is available.
Big blow having those four out?
Yeah, every player is a player too much, but of course it's a lot of midfield players, and it's
many weeks now for Kova, we miss him and also NG. Of course Ben Chilwell is a long one,
we know this. For Trevoh we need more examinations to see how bad the injury is.
Just to clarify, Reece James, Werner, Jorginho all available?
They are available, yeah, they are training and available.
West Ham are deserving of their top four spot right now after their start to the season?
They were almost in the top four last season, they were fighting the whole season for that. They are
a very good team with a very good coach, they show huge solidarity.
It's always a joy to watch their games because they play with a lot of energy,
a lot of positivity in what they are doing, their belief.
They do not have too many changes, they play as a team and they do what they do good,
they believe in themselves and that's why everybody is there when they deserve to be.
At the moment they are in fourth place, they play strong in European competitions.
It's a tough match, it's a tough team to play against –
but it's also tough to play against us so it will be an exciting lunchtime match. So
we need to be on our top level to have a chance to win.
Ralf Rangnick turned Chelsea down, he said in February, you were already in the role....
So maybe that was after our draw against Wolverhampton!
Maybe the bosses saw the draw against Wolverhampton and and thought 'he
doesn't know what he's doing, let's bring Ralf in for four months'!
He must have the date wrong, hopefully. Let's say hopefully. Otherwise, well, you it's a nice
job to have in world football to be coach of Chelsea, so, you need to be very realistic.
Of course, if you get the phone call you should be well aware you're not
the only one getting a phone call and now I'm here and I'm very happy.
How difficult is it to be at the top level with all these
games coming so quickly and a 12.30pm kick off?
Yep, it is another challenge coming. Like you said, we had a very exciting week with Leicester,
then Juventus, then Man Utd, big games, big challenges but a lot of reward
for good performances.
Then there was the Ballon D’Or evening, then suddenly the Wednesday evening game
against a strong, brave and encouraged Watford, a side with nothing to lose
so there have been distractions, a lot of different approaches to games.
From Wednesday afternoon to Saturday morning there is not a lot of time to dream or to lose focus,
we had to refocus straight away. This is what we did, we had a meeting in the morning and
another in the evening to prepare our team because there is simply no time to do this tomorrow.
It is hard, sometimes we are fatigued and sometimes
it is stressful but this is what we want and love and we are in the middle of it.
Romelu Lukaku - how do you assess where he is at the moment, can he start tomorrow?
Well, I will not tell you because this is
part of the lineup where we also want the opponents to know very late who starts for us.
He is in training, he wants to start, he is eager to start and like you asked before, now it is the
whole team. How difficult is it to reach the top level? It is also difficult for Romelu
and the other guys who have come in after injuries to hit their top level?
I honestly don’t know. We should always try to reach the top level.
Watford caused us a lot of problems so we needed to focus on not allowing too many
big chances and it was a mental game to hang in there and not get too frustrated.
We still had to wait for the chances to be clinical and it gave us the win.
Tomorrow there will be new questions, it is a completely new team,
we will have some changes again but from there we go but we are full of confidence.
Spoken to Rangnick since he took the job? Any Premier League advice?
No, I haven't spoken to him. If I did speak to him then I
would tell him congratulations but not advice.
Nobody needs advice from me, I have enough to do to keep us going in the right direction.
Every situation is different and he will do it his own way and
he can prove himself now at a very big club.
Could you deploy Saul as a wingback given you're a bit light in that area?
He is still adapting and he had an early yellow card and was a bit shy to play all in, in duels.
For that we lacked a bit of physicality because he did not want to risk a red card.
I think that he could play in a wingback role for us. Even if we play in a dominant game,
an offensive game because he is very strong in arriving in the opponents’ box.
Very strong in finishing, he has good timing to arrive at the second post for the header.
He sometimes does this in training which is why we think
he could be a good fit and maybe in the next games we have to try because Chilly is out
long-term and a lot of games are coming and we maybe cannot put every game on Marcos’ shoulders.
Hakim Ziyech seems to be in a good place, is he ready to start more games now?
I like him. He can feel it that he feels better now. it took him a long
time. He was always very ambitious with his shoulder injury. I can feel that it that
the 100 percent he could give was not the 100 percent of his top level. now
he feels much better. I can feel it. He smiles, he’s happy, he is decisive.
He had huge influence from the bench against Leicester and Watford.
He had two matches in between from the start – Juventus and Man United.
He is in a good shape, good form, good state of mind and we want him
to be influential. I will not tell you if he starts tomorrow or comes from the bench.
Massive boost having Jorginho and Reece James back, especially?
It is massive because Reece is the specialist on the side and Jorgi is the guy left from Kova,
NG and him from the three on whose shoulders we put the central role over a very long period now.
Absolutely happy that Ruben steps in now in the way he does it.
But we are happy that Jorgi is back in training and we can’t wait for
Kova and NG to come back because they are a very important part of the season and in our games.
This midfield role, where we missed the experience and the leadership qualities of the guys that are
out. It is good that they are back. We will never complain because we are here to find
solutions. If we miss players, we have players and they have contracts here because they deserve it.
This is what we do and we will have a strong team on the pitch tomorrow and we had a strong team
on the pitch against Watford and we are used to having some changes in between.