After seeing his side surrender winning positions in the previous two games against West Ham and Zenit, and lamented that in the game in Russia especially his players paid the price for trying to manage the result at below their top intensity levels, our head coach has now confirmed the statistical performance analysis showed some measurements were down about five per cent on the standards set earlier in the season, the standards he says make Chelsea horrible to play against.‘We are talking about work, we talking about speed, we are talking about physical input,’ he lists, and he admits the shortfall may not be helped by the ongoing injury absences of N’Golo Kante, Ben Chilwell and Mateo Kovacic, guys who in his words are all about relentless, high-speed, unthankful work.‘It is very difficult to come to this kind of level where we have pushed ourselves, it's maybe even harder to stay there,’ Tuchel points out.

‘It is now the next step for all of us to stay on this level, to be relentless, and to not try to escape with 95 per cent or 90 per cent. The very unusual thing is that when we had the lead and we gave matches away, we were not outclassed. We were out-worked and outrun in Zenit and this was surprising and very, very unusual.’Tuchel has been asked to consider a suggestion that dips in form and results in the middle of winter is a recurring Chelsea theme in recent years.‘That would be worrying if it is like this, and then it's my job to stop it and to point the finger and find the right methods, words or actions to stop it, because there's no reason for it,’ he stated, before making it clear he would only believe there is something going on in December and January at Chelsea if there are clear performance statistics to back it up, rather than just a coincidence of results.‘If there is a statistic it would even raise my hunger to go against it. Even if it was like this in the last three winters, it's not written that this has to be something or it's from heaven above. If it was we can stop training and stop doing all our meetings because we just go out and wait to see what's the plan from above for this game!‘Instead we dig in, we take it on and do not let the players or ourselves escape with excuses.‘We have to be careful we don't make things bigger than they are. We played a draw against Man United at home, we had a one really average performance in Watford but we won it and had a good performance over most minutes of the match against West Ham and we lost it. This can happen but we are pushing for very good performances all the time.

‘I don't want to look away, I don't want to make it too big and too general at the moment. Hopefully we can end the discussions with normal performances and the results from before.‘What I say on the microphone, you can be sure that I said it before in the locker room because I don't give messages [to the players] over the microphone and camera. I give them straightaway and I give them to the whole team. There are no surprises in front of the camera or in press conferences.‘When everybody wants the players to be on the top level all the time it is stressful, it is fatiguing. It is not always very pleasant but that's the reality.’