Kante retuned to the Chelsea side in our 0-0 stalemate at Wolves on Sunday and played the full 90 minutes, despite Tuchel admitting post-match that it was never the plan to throw N’Golo back in at the deep end after trouble with a knee injury.

‘What we did with N’Golo Kante for 90 minutes was close to irresponsible,’ Tuchel said in his media conference today ahead of Wednesday night's game.

‘Will he be involved against Brentford? Simply no. We cannot do this and I will not do it.

‘We will now give him time to recover and prepare for Aston Villa and this is the situation.’

Tuchel did however confirm Jorginho’s availability for tomorrow’s quarter-final clash. ‘Jorginho had a negative test, it was a wrong positive, so he is back training.

‘Andreas is very doubtful with injury and the same for Trevoh Chalobah,’ Tuchel confirmed. ‘From the match, we have Chalobah a big doubt. N’Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic we took a huge risk with, and we now are paying for this. Two matches in one week for them is simply impossible.’

Our German head coach confirmed that in many first-team players’ absence, the Under-23s trained at Cobham yesterday ahead of Wednesday’s match.

‘We made them come for two training sessions but then we detected that Lewis Baker is positive for Covid. Another player out. This is another risk. We blend some squads and now we have another positive.

‘The players [with Covid] are okay and this is the most important. They are not back as they have to be out for 10 days before release. This is the concern we have and then they are out, have Covid and we don’t know if they can play or not if it is risky,’ Tuchel added.

On yesterday’s decision by the Premier League not to call for a fire break in the current season, the German admitted he did not believe the decision to take a break would be the outcome of the meeting.

‘I thought this was coming. I was not concerned about the bigger picture, we have a schedule, with the Club World Cup, it is not easy to postpone games but for isolated situations like ours in the last match we thought we had a strong case.

‘I shared my thoughts with everybody. We accept the situation and the challenge. We had 14 players and with a lot of them we took a huge risk. We did not feel fully safe. Apart from that, we will accept the next challenge and it will not get easier because these guys are out.’