Tuchel confident Chelsea’s push for silverware will continue
Thomas Tuchel is confident whoever takes the reins at Chelsea will want to continue the club’s relentless drive for silverware given the sums they’ll be coughing up.
The deadline for bids, which have come in between an eye-watering £2-2.7billion, passed on Friday night with merchant bank Raine Group now set to make a decision on the preferred buyer before talks with the Government can begin.
There are a trio of American bidders going head-to-head, with the Ricketss family (who own the Chicago Cubs), Todd Boehly (LA Dodgers co-owner) and Woody Johnson (New York Jets owner) all in the running.
Under Roman Abramovich’s ownership, Chelsea became a European super power and won every trophy possible – a culture Tuchel is not expecting to fade under new ownership.
“If somebody buys a club for this amount of money then it’s about challenging on the highest kind of level,” said Tuchel.
Read Tuchel’s full comments right here
Elsewhere in the FA Cup…
This is the first match of the FA Cup quarter-finals.
The other three take place tomorrow. Everton travel to Crystal Palace in the early kick-off, before Southampton host Manchester City and Liverpool are away to Nottingham Forest.
Will we get some big shocks, or is it going to be the biggest teams dominating the semi-final lineup?
Wilder: There’s not a huge amount of sympathy
There’s been a bit of tension between the two clubs in the build-up to this match, and it’s safe to say Boro boss Chris Wilder is not feeling incredibly sorry for the Blues and their current off-field situation.
He said: “For me, the noise that’s been coming out if it – the club is not in jeopardy, is it? It’s not a situation like a Macclesfield or a Bury in the football pyramid, what happened and shouldn’t really have happened.
“It will go up for sale and it will be bought by a billionaire, who will possibly invest more money into it, they’ll possibly invest in the stadium, invest in the facilities, so I don’t think there’s, in the football world, an incredible amount of sympathy over what’s happening, really, and I don’t think Chelsea supporters would expect that as well.”
And here’s the Middlesbrough team: Lumley, Dijksteel, Taylor, Fry, Tavernier, Howson, McNair, Crooks, Connolly, Jones, Balogun
Chelsea team news: Lukaku starts
Chelsea XI: Mendy, Azpilicueta, Silva, Rudiger, Sarr, Kovacic, Loftus-Cheek, Mount, Ziyech, Lukaku, Pulisic
Subs: Bettinelli, Alonso, Kenedy, Chalobah, Kante, Barkley, Havertz, Vale, Werner
Team news from the Riverside is coming up in 10 minutes…
Contents