The Spaniard was part of the Blues side which suffered a painful 4-1 defeat to Brentford at Stamford Bridge on Saturday, having taken the lead early in the second half through a brilliant long-range strike by Antonio Rudiger, only to lose it almost immediately as we conceded three times in the space of 10 minutes.

Having gone into the match following a run of six consecutive victories in all competitions, before last week’s international break, our captain admitted this is a tough result to take for the team.

‘It’s very tough, of course, because it’s not the result we were looking for,’ said Azpilicueta. ‘We are disappointed, we are frustrated, but now we have to admit our mistakes and move forward.

‘Of course after the international break you want to restart with a win and of course we wanted to extend the winning run as long as possible and we were not able to. But that’s the Premier League and it shows how difficult it is to do it. It’s a big loss and of course we’re really disappointed.’

There were no excuses from the Blues skipper, either, as he was quick to admit we fell below our usual standard as he looked at where we fell short, as well as acknowledging the performance of our opponents.

‘We were maybe not moving the ball sharply enough. I think in the first half we didn’t start well. At the beginning of the game we lost a few balls, they had a few chances. We escaped without conceding goals, but we were not sharp enough, we didn’t have the energy that we usually have.

‘We finished the first half better, we were looking in control but not dangerous enough to cause them problems. Then we started the second half really well, we had an amazing goal from Toni, and then in 10 minutes we gave everything away because we conceded three goals, we were looking really far from the game.

‘They are a really compact team, they were ready for counter-attacks, every set-play is dangerous from them. Brentford competed and they made things really difficult and I think they deserved the win today.’

Azpilicueta and his team-mates won’t have to wait long for their chance to get back to winning ways, though, and it couldn’t come on a much bigger occasion, as we host Real Madrid at the Bridge in the first leg of our Champions League quarter-final on Wednesday evening.

‘Now it’s up to us to restart again, to start from Wednesday against Real Madrid and then move forward,’ he added.

‘We are one of the few teams that are still in three competitions. We know that we have to compete in every single one. Of course this is a disappointing result, everybody feels frustrated, but we have a day off and then from Monday we have to restart again.

‘The Champions League is here, Real Madrid. We know that it is a big game and we have to be all together in this difficult moment and move forward because we still have a lot of things ahead. This group has always shown a great mentality and we will keep working hard.’