The Moroccan opened the scoring against Tottenham shortly after half-time with a fantastic effort, which had Stamford Bridge on its feet, curling into the top corner past a rooted Hugo Lloris from outside the box.

Understandably, it was high on the winger’s mind when reflecting on our 2-0 victory as a whole, leaving no doubt how pleased he was with his effort when asked for his verdict on how special a strike it was.

‘It was a good goal, I think it was a 10 out of 10 actually,’ he responded with a smile. ‘I wanted to put it in the top corner, but it’s always the question if it goes in or not. I didn’t know it would go in straight away when I hit it.

‘I was following the ball, I thought maybe I’d hit it a little bit long, but in the end I saw it go in. When it went in everybody on the pitch, off the pitch, enjoyed it and the feeling of the game after this was really good.’

Ziyech also confirmed the view from the stands that the Blues players were enjoying themselves on the pitch, putting in an excellent performance to secure a fourth win over our London rivals this season with some comfort.

With a break until Chelsea’s next game against Plymouth in the FA Cup in two weeks, he also felt it was important to get back on form with a victory to make sure the players went away happy and confident for that period.

‘I enjoyed it. It was a good game from us, we created a lot of chances, played good football and everybody put in their strength, so I think overall it was good evening.

‘The message from the manager at half-time was just to keep doing what we were doing and I think that’s what we did in the second half. After we made it 2-0 we had some times when we were a bit down, as they were putting pressure on us, but until the end we still didn’t give anything away so we were able to get the win.

‘You always want to have a good game and especially now because we have some days off. Now we go into it in a better mood to enjoy a couple of days off. It’s always good to have a win before that and from next week we will focus again.’

The win over Spurs was the second game running that Ziyech had scored the first goal of the match, having also put us 1-0 up away at Brighton in midweek. There was little celebration in evidence from the 28-year-old at the Amex Stadium, in contrast to the wide smile on display following his first Premier League goal at Stamford Bridge, and he explained that was down to very different feelings on our overall performance and the direction those games were going in.

‘It’s just two different situations. In the game against Brighton, I got the first to make it 1-0, but we weren’t playing well, so there was a little bit of frustration. But against Tottenham, I think right from the beginning we played well.

‘We had them where we wanted them. Sometimes they had some counter-attacks but it wasn’t really dangerous at all. I think we played a good game, we had a lot of chances, played a lot of football, and so it was a different situation.’

With that in mind, let’s hope that once matches resume on 5 February, we see Ziyech celebrating plenty more goals with a big smile.