There was nothing the goalkeeper could do about Wilfred Ndidi’s accurate shot that breached our backline early on, nor James Maddison’s composed finish with half-time approaching. Mendy did save well from Jamie Vardy between those goals and Youri Tielemans after the interval, but those interventions ultimately just kept the final scoreline down.

‘We wanted to start well, but we put ourselves in danger from a free-kick we weren’t ready for and then a corner they scored the first goal from,’ he assessed.

‘We knew beforehand they were a team that it is difficult to come back against. We tried, but I think we were dangerous going forward on too few occasions to really worry them.’

Having gone unbeaten in each of his first 13 games as a Chelsea player, Mendy has now tasted defeat in five of his past eight appearances.

Asked about what has changed, the Senegalese identified one area which has been proven costly recently, and he also discussed the job at hand as we seek to stabilise our performances and results over a substantial period.

‘What we are missing at the moment is consistency, being good for the whole match. We often have a bad patch, concede a goal and it makes it too hard to recover. We need to find more consistency in matches to be able to get past this level of team.

‘It’s difficult to explain because we were in good form and then we got into difficulty. It happened very quickly. We need to concentrate on the return phase now and getting near the levels we were at.

‘It’s up to us to rectify the current situation and above all show more. We have to stay together and stay as positive as possible during this delicate moment.’