Chelsea have won just one of our past five matches in the Premier League, leaving the door ajar for chasers Arsenal and Tottenham to close the gap in the race for the final two Champions League positions.

The Gunners are just a point behind Tuchel’s men following recent results, while Spurs are a further four back, and the two north London sides meet at the Emirates on Thursday evening. That clash means we could re-establish safe ground as we head to Elland Road to take on Leeds United 24 hours earlier.

In the build-up, Tuchel has reflected on our recent run of stuttering performances, which have seen us take five points from the last 15 available, including two dropped last time out at home to Wolves.

It is not the way that departing players such as Antonio Rudiger, who has confirmed his summer exit, want to sign off and the Chelsea head coach admits that those decisions may have had some unintended consequences.

‘I’m absolutely convinced that they want to [end the season strongly] but maybe they underestimated the impact of these decisions signing for other clubs,’ he reflected.

‘I have the feeling that they experience it now themselves but they don’t want this and they don’t do it intentionally.

‘We feel it a bit different. We feel a slightly different approach to the games and maybe these shock experiences are necessary to really wake up.

'Maybe this is the latest moment to wake up and not go out of the season like this.’

However, Tuchel has no doubts about his compatriot’s desire to bring his five-year Stamford Bridge stay to a close in style.

‘It is important and you’re never finished with development,’ he continued. ‘This is a key moment for his personal career.

‘He knows it and I think he will step up because it’s the moment to do it.’

Leeds have some rather different but no less pressing matters to address, their top-flight status now in jeopardy following back-to-back defeats and the revitalised form of Everton and Burnley below them.

The Whites dropped into the bottom three after their weekend loss to Arsenal, a feisty game that saw Luke Ayling sent off and their haul of yellow cards for the season hit 96, a new record for the most bookings for a club within a single Premier League campaign.

With the FA Cup final looming this weekend, Tuchel is adamant that he won’t rest players in Yorkshire for fear of them getting injured, though the number of demanding fixtures in a short timeframe may force some adjustments.

‘The referee’s role is always very important,’ he continued. ‘We have seen it in their last games with big physicality and they take huge risks also in challenges, which is fair enough, but I don’t feel comfortable in predicting this in our game.

‘We have to deal with it and of course we expect a certain level of fair play but we cannot in our position leave players out because we fear they will get injured.

‘We need to check carefully because we had a high intensity to our data comparison in the match against Wolverhampton, we expect a high intensity match in Leeds away and we have one day less to recover for Saturday, which will not be a walk in the park for sure.

‘Now we have three high-intensity matches and we need to see how we manage this through the week but not in terms of us being scared of injury. We cannot be. We trust the refereeing and we trust the opponent that a certain level of fair play will not be crossed, which also counts for us as well.’