The Blues have found consistency in the Premier League difficult to come by recently, but as we enter the final four league games of the season we have a good opportunity to consolidate our third place in the table and Champions League qualification when we host Wolves at Stamford Bridge tomorrow afternoon.

However, after goalless draws in our last two matches against the West Midlands side, Tuchel knows we will need to step up our game in certain areas to breach one of the top flight’s toughest defences – only ourselves, Manchester City and Liverpool have conceded less this season – and go one better with a victory this time around, even if Wolves have had their own issues of late.

‘They had problems in the very beginning with results and then they were very strong over a large part of the season,’ said our head coach. ‘They struggled with results in the last weeks, everybody sees that.

‘If you go a bit deeper in the statistics and analysing their matches you see that it’s still very difficult to create chances against them. It’s very difficult to bypass their defenders, they defend very disciplined and for me it’s not possible to hurt them by pure ball possession.

‘We experienced that kind of game in the first match this season, where we struggled a bit in the first half on the ball with their structure. We didn’t allow anything, we defended very well, but we struggled also to create. So we need to be very aware of the moments where it’s possible to accelerate the game.

‘So far this season and also in the last matches it’s been impossible to catch them on the counter-attack because they are very well protected when they attack. So we need a good mix between patience and trying to play with a high rhythm, so we don’t get the feeling that everything gets a bit stuck. So we will try to implement a high rhythm and I expect the core performance of discipline and a very well structured team.’

Tuchel’s attempts to implement his plan to break down Wolves are helped by having a rare five days without a match to prepare at Cobham, but the German feels it is the mentality as much as the tactics which has been responsible for our dropped points recently.

‘We had a week to prepare which was nice, but not nice because we prefer to play Champions League. But it was nice to have the team, to have influence in training, to set the focus on the things we want to improve and we want to meet our standards and we demand a lot from us.

‘I think there’s a lot of reasons why it’s sometimes almost normal to drop the intensity and the level of effort, but as we are an elite sports team and we compete on the highest level there’s not much room for normal behaviour. We want elite behaviour and this includes me so we need to step up, show another reaction and show that we can play better, we can have more impact and more effort in the matches, starting from tomorrow.’

The Blues boss went on to explain why he feels it is merely human that performances can drop below our usual standard following such an intense period of high-profile matches, causing a chain reaction, but reiterated that at this level we need to rise above even such natural reactions.

‘If you come from big knock-out matches like at Real Madrid and Wembley, then after a busy schedule you suddenly go back to the league and play for points and maybe the team had a bit the feeling we had not so much to win, not so much to lose, and you maybe lose a little bit of the edge,’ he added. ‘This can already be enough to lose matches and then you lose a bit of the confidence.

‘So there are many reasons and it is also maybe normal that it happens, but normal is hard to accept for us because we demand more than normal and we are in a type of league situation where normal does not bring us to the goals that we demand from ourselves.

‘So we have to fight it, go against it, against ourselves, against our normal behaviour to drop a little bit and be back on the top level. It starts with physical input from tomorrow.’