Head coach Thomas Tuchel has acknowledged that Chelsea were "absolutely not competitive" as they were thrashed 4-0 by Arsenal in Florida on Saturday night.
The Blues went into the game on the back of a narrow 2-1 victory over Club America and penalty-shootout defeat to Charlotte FC in the opening two matches of their American pre-season tour.
However, Tuchel watched on helplessly as his Chelsea side were comprehensively beaten by their London rivals, the Gunners scoring two goals in each half.
Gabriel Jesus and Martin Odegaard put Arsenal in control with 36 minutes on the clock, with Bukayo Saka and Albert Sambi Lokonga netting in the 66th and 93rd minutes respectively.
With less than two weeks remaining until the start of the new Premier League campaign, Tuchel was left visibly frustrated by the current situation within his squad.
Speaking to reporters, as quoted by football.london, the German said: "I think we deserved to lose – which is fair enough – because we were simply not good enough. We were absolutely not competitive. The worrying part is the level of commitment, physically and mentally, for this match was not the same, it was far higher for Arsenal than us.
When quizzed on whether Chelsea will be ready to face Everton on August 6, Tuchel added: "I can not guarantee. I saw today a team in Arsenal who are mentally committed to an idea of playing, a level of exhaustion, a level of physical commitment that we could not match.
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"Also, a level of mental commitment that we lacked because we have a lot of players who are thinking about leaving and looking at their options. We have players that have left and I think at the moment that's obvious."
As it stands, Tuchel has managed to complete the signings of Raheem Sterling and Kalidou Koulibaly, the latter featuring for the final 25 minutes in what was his first outing of pre-season.
However, at a time when Chelsea are attempting to bring in further fresh faces, question marks remain over the attack with the likes of Hakim Ziyech and Timo Werner among the players being linked with a move away from Stamford Bridge.
Although Tuchel has insisted in the past that his priority is on finding replacements for Andreas Christensen and Antonio Rudiger, he hinted after this game that he may aim to make changes in the final third with his creative and central-attacking players showing the same inconsistencies which hindered their efforts during 2021-22.
Tuchel said: "If you look at the first half, it was even hard to escape our half in a productive way and to play in the opponent's half in a positive way and create chances – we had one chance with a shot.
"But the amount of dangerous situations, the amount of one against ones, the amount of accelerations in the second half, where we dominated the game and were the better team in the first 22 minutes, but with their first action they score and we didn't have too many dangerous situations [after that].
"Listen, it's the same players, so why should anything change? We will see hopefully development but at the moment, we have the same issues because we have the same players."
Of the players who are known to want to leave Chelsea this summer, Cesar Azpilicueta is keen to link up with Barcelona, a situation which has been acknowledged by Tuchel.
However, in his pre-match press conference ahead of this game, Tuchel hinted that he currently intends to retain the services of the club captain for the final 12 months of his contract.
Darren Plant
