Thomas Tuchel hailed the performance of Thiago Silva for victory at Burnley.
Tuchel admits they needed the veteran’s calming influence on the day.
He said, “He’s so professional. The dressing rooms are not so big here, which is not a problem, but when you’re in there so close with the team you can see his focus and how professional he prepares for every game. That’s why he can perform like this.
“In a match where you have so many long balls and so many second balls, and where you rely so heavily on the quality of your first touch if you win a duel in the air, it makes a huge difference and that’s what he does.
“It’s very impressive but I can tell you he works very hard and on top of it he’s a fantastic person and a big character in the dressing room.”
Thomas Tuchel was also delighted to have Reece James back for victory at Burnley.
James struck in the 4-0 win.
Tuchel said, “We missed him for such a long time that you get used to it. It was nine weeks and in this time we had something like 25 matches so we were constantly trying to find solutions and we did it as a team.
“We managed to win games and even titles in this period but once he’s back and plays three times, today the first time from the beginning you see what you missed. It’s such huge quality and very impressive how decisive he is in training and now even in the games.
“These positions are very important when you play with this structure and it’s the same on the left side so it puts things into perspective when you see what we missed and I’m very happy that he came back like this.”
