Kante has started 25 of Tuchel's 53 matches as Blues head coach and the Parisian has now been ruled out of Chelsea’s next match, a visit to Zenit St Petersburg in the Champions League on Wednesday evening.

When pressed on whether the 30-year-old is starting to struggle for fitness due to his age, Tuchel quickly denied such claims.

‘No. Me personally, I am not so careful when to bring him back,’ said the Bavarian in his pre-match press conference. ‘It is actually a very open relationship with N'Golo. He takes care about this, he needs his time and we respect this.

‘We don’t have the feeling that it is about age he takes longer. He is, in general, a careful person, he takes care of his body and doesn’t take risk.

‘I think he is superman. He is the guy who makes the difference, the guy everybody in the whole world wants in his midfield.

‘We miss him for a long time. Can we produce results and top performances without N’Golo? Yes, we can. We have proved it already.’

Saturday’s defeat to West Ham was only the third time the Blues have conceded two or more goals in a singular match under Tuchel and, noticeably, Kante has been missing from the Chelsea team on each occasion.

‘It’s easier with him if he is not out for too many weeks,’ our head coach admitted. ‘We built him up after his last injury. We had an accident, this can happen.

‘This is not related to age or to overload, simply an accident during the match. It happened against Juventus. Of course, we miss him a lot.’