Thomas Tuchel has called for patience over Toni Rudiger’s contract negotiations – but insists no player is bigger than Chelsea.
Rudiger can talk to interested clubs from abroad next month, with the Germany international being targeted by Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain.
He stands to earn as much as £400,000-a-week as a free agent, which is why there is a growing belief within Stamford Bridge that the centre back will walk away at the end of the season.
Rudiger has been a key figure under Tuchel, which has only seen his list of admirers grow over the past year – leaving Chelsea facing the prospect of having to spend heavily to replace him in the summer.
Jules Kounde remains their leading defensive target, while it is understood links with Attila Szalai have been overblown to create a market for the Hungary international.
But Tuchel’s preference is to keep hold of Rudiger.
He said: “It is super important and as I understood, like myself and everybody else, we absolutely accept the importance, we are fully aware of the importance of Toni and the role he is playing on and off the pitch. There is no doubt in that.
“And yes it is true nobody is bigger than a club, nobody is. This is a team effort, it is a team game, it is a strong club and it is also about the club.
“It is not about me, it is not only about Toni — and I mean that in the best way because we know what he is doing and we are fully aware of it.
“In the end, we need a bit of patience. I have no update right now.”
Tuchel’s priority right now is to get Chelsea’s season back on track after a run of only three wins in their last seven games in all competitions.
He is adamant there will be no repeat of last season when a December slump that carried on into January cost Frank Lampard his job.
Ahead of Saturday’s clash with Leeds, he added: “If there is a statistic that there is something going on in December with Chelsea in December and January, I would believe it. But it would even raise my hunger to go against it because why should I be involved in this?
“I would simply not accept that I get affected by it, even if it was like this last winter, if it was three or four winters before, I don’t care.
“Now we are in this winter and it is not written that it has to be again like this. If something is written or it’s from heaven above, then we can stop training and stop our meetings, and just go out and wait for the plan from above for tomorrow’s game.
“We dig in, we dig in, do not let the players escape, do not let ourselves escape with excuses. I don’t want to look away and I don’t want to make it too big and too general at the moment and hopefully we can end the discussions with normal performances and hopefully the results will follow.”
