Chelsea suffered a first away defeat since January on Merseyside after Richarlison latched onto a defensive error just minutes after the first second-half whistle.

Thomas Tuchel described individual mistakes as one of the reasons to blame for our current Premier League form and Loftus-Cheek mirrored our head coach’s post-match comments when assessing the game himself.

‘We’re all very disappointed. Coming into the game we knew it was going to be a hostile atmosphere and it’d be like a final to them. We felt that straight away,’ Ruben said after making his 50th Chelsea start at Goodison.

‘They came out of the blocks second half and caught us napping. We were fighting an uphill battle from then on, the fans were behind them, and it was hard to break them down. It was disappointing.

‘We’ve made a few mistakes over the past few matches and haven’t kept clean sheets from individual errors. That is how football is, if you keep shooting yourselves in the foot it will be difficult to get out of it.’

When pressed on why he believes these mistakes are occurring more regularly, the Cobham graduate pointed towards our concentration levels.

‘It’s up to us as individuals to tune in and sharpen up as a team together. Getting everyone ready for the game, these are basics in football. If you don’t have these basics, you will struggle like we have the last four games. This is not Chelsea standard at all. Our concentration levels were not good enough.

‘We want top four but we cannot perform like that with other teams doing well around us. We need wins. It is hard to process it right now and we will look back at it once the emotions have calmed down.

‘We had chances to score numerous times. Their keeper made some great saves. If we put them in, I think we could be coming away with a win.’

Ruben also shared his support for captain Cesar Azpilicueta, whose mistake when playing out from the back led to the opening goal.

‘It can happen to anyone. I can’t remember in his career when that has happened to him. It is one of those ones and I am sure he will put it behind him very quickly as we have some big games coming up. Azpi is a fantastic player and no one will blame anyone.’