Chilwell, Kovacic and Kante all missed Sunday’s draw with Manchester United and remain sidelined for Wednesday evening's Premier League clash at Vicarage Road, while our head coach also revealed at his pre-match press conference that there are doubts surrounding the fitness of Reece James, Jorginho and Timo Werner.

Romelu Lukaku is fit to be part of the squad once again, after making his return from injury as a late substitute against his former side on Sunday, with Tuchel confirming that the Belgian has continued to train with no issues.

‘Romelu is pretty easy,’ Tuchel began his press conference. ‘He came on in the last match and he has continued to train with the group.

‘He is ready to progress in minutes and this is where he is at right now.

‘For the game tomorrow at Watford, for sure we will be without Chilly, Kova and N’Golo who are all out and then we have some doubts over some other players that we need a bit more time on, to do some examinations on before deciding whether they can be involved.

‘Reece James, Jorginho and Timo Werner we will have to wait and then decide on. They all finished training with us today but there will be some last-minute decisions on those players for sure.’

With such a busy period coming up for the Blues leading up to Christmas, Tuchel was asked how he will manage the load on his players and whether we could expect to see some squad rotation over the next few weeks.

‘It will be challenging but it has been challenging before,’ added Thomas. ‘We won't change our routine.

‘We have a tight communication with the medical and fitness department and we tried to predict the load, look at who is overloaded and underloaded, and from there we see what we will need in the next game.

‘As you know, we take it step by step. If you look too far ahead you will see there are tough weeks coming. That is why we focus on the details, the next game, maybe on the next two games where we can rely on our predictions because we have fantastic support from everybody.

‘It's on the players to be strong in the games but to take recovery very seriously. We have to be very good in recovery and sleeping, taking the right food and supplements to help us recover.

‘Our style is intense and needs to be to have a certain mentality and identity on the pitch. This is what we want. We are not scared to rotate and we will use the whole squad.’