It was a difficult afternoon all around for the Blues at a rain-soaked Old Trafford. We were reduced to 10 men early on by a red card shown to Robert Sanchez, lost Cole Palmer to injury and found ourselves trailing 2-0 before Casemiro’s sending off levelled the playing field again shortly before half-time.

Chalobah pulled one back with a brilliant header after the break, but despite pushing hard right to the final whistle, Chelsea couldn’t find the equaliser needed to salvage a point from this Premier League away trip.

When he spoke after the game, it was clear that this was a painful loss for our centre-back and goal scorer.

‘It was really tough,’ said Chalobah. ‘I want to take this opportunity to say sorry to the fans. That performance was not the level we want to show and it was difficult, especially in the first 20 minutes, with everything that happened.

‘We’ve got to look at ourselves and take responsibility. We can’t say we’re a young team anymore, we have to take responsibility as men and hold that on ourselves. That’s not the level we’ve shown in the last six months.

‘Last season is gone, now there’s going to be a lot of pressure on us and we’ve got to show in these types of games why we are at the top and why we should be competing for the best.’

The trip to Manchester was the third of four consecutive away games for the Blues in the space of 11 days, including the midweek match at Bayern Munich in the UEFA Champions League, but Chalobah refused to use that as an excuse for Saturday’s 2-1 defeat.

‘Mentally and physically it’s tough, but when you qualify for the Champions League, this is what we wanted last season and we’re here, so we can’t just let it slip by. We have to pull ourselves together and do the right things.

‘We can’t react when we go 2-0 down, we have to react from the moment the whistle goes. Obviously we got the goal and we were pushing and pushing, but it’s always difficult to come back when you go 2-0 down. We just need to start the game properly. That’s the key, to start the game well.

‘So we’ve just got to learn, start games on the front foot, start games the way we want to start. That’s what we have to learn from the past few games. That is not the level we want to show, but we have to learn from it. It’s a long season, we can’t dwell on this, but we have to learn from it.’

The first opportunity for the Blues to put that into practice comes soon. In two days we will embark on another away trip, when we begin our Carabao Cup campaign at Lincoln City on Tuesday evening, before hosting Brighton & Hove Albion in the Premier League next Saturday.