It is impossible to completely ignore next week’s Champions League final on the horizon, but before that there is another big match in the Premier League, when we travel to Birmingham today knowing a win over Aston Villa will ensure that we qualify for next season’s competition no matter what happens elsewhere this afternoon or in Porto on Saturday.

While we are fighting right until the end of the Premier League campaign to finish in the top four, our Champions League opponents Manchester City have been able to take it easy and rest players to avoid injuries after winning the title with games to spare.

However, Tuchel believes that might not necessarily be a disadvantage for the Blues, and says it isn’t an easy question to decide if he would prefer to be able to rest players.

‘Yes, in the clear sense that we want to have them in the final and don’t want to have any injuries, like we had with N’Golo against Leicester and almost with Mason and Chilly,’ he explained. ‘You always have the risk in any match to have injuries.

‘But also no, because if we had been qualified, you can lose the energy, you can overthink it about who you can leave out, who needs a rest and suddenly you don’t know if they catch the momentum again.

‘You’re always torn and I prefer to keep on going. I think even it’s an advantage to keep on going to the very end and to have the Champions League final after that. To fight for it constantly and not have to deal with the situation where you don’t fight, you don’t want to be injured but you don’t want to lose your rhythm.

‘It’s better now to just think about Aston Villa and hope for a bit of luck and take all the respect we can for them. There will be no players rested. It was all in against Leicester and it will be all in against Aston Villa.’

Our head coach also believes that the pressure of all or nothing matches like today’s decisive Premier League fixture at Villa Park can bring out the best in a team and make sure we are focused completely on the immediate task at hand, rather than letting our mind wander ahead to Porto.

‘You get absolutely focused. I have the feeling that you get absolutely sharp if the kind of pressure that we have now is on. These last two matches against Leicester and Aston Villa, even if the pressure was on before, they are different. We don’t have to talk around it because the situation is so clear now.

‘It brings you to the edge, gets you out of bed early, you think twice and you become sharp. We can deliver under pressure, I like that my team delivers under pressure consistently with top performances and this is what is needed now. We’ve got ourselves into this situation, which is a very positive thing. Everybody would have loved this situation in January, so now here we are, and I feel still everybody is calm, everybody is well aware what is needed.

‘We have full respect for Aston Villa and their quality and Premier League away games in general and with spectators. So we need to be the best that we can be.’