The Blues made an excellent start to the match at Villa Park and took an early lead, when a brilliant piece of play down the right wing by Pedro Neto allowed Enzo Fernandez to open the scoring.

However, the home side came into the game more as it went on and, despite a couple of crucial blocks by Cucurella, were able to scramble in an equaliser before netting an 89th-minute winner to deny us a share of the points.

Although he was pleased with the strong performance against a fellow top-four hopeful, Cucurella knows it will count for nothing if we can’t show the cutting edge required to convert it into a positive result.

‘I think we played well, in the first half especially,’ said the Spaniard. ‘In the second half we lost a bit of control but we need to kill the game in some moments where we need to be more clinical.

‘It is true we played well but it is not enough, we need to keep improving. We are not in a good part of the journey maybe, but we have another game in two days. We have two games at home next, so we cannot make more mistakes.’

He was clear that it was at both ends of the pitch we need to continue working hard to improve, himself included, calling on the Blues to stick together to find the cutting edge needed to convert more of our chances while denying opportunities to our opponents.

‘I think in general we don’t concede too many chances but if we concede goals it’s difficult. But it’s part of the game, we need to improve things. I need to be better in this as well, I need to control the games more, be more clinical when we have the chances.

‘So I think in general we can improve a lot of things. We need to work hard. Last week we trained really well but it’s not good enough so we need to have a step forward.

‘We need to feel the pain maybe after this defeat, but we are missing players we had in the first part of the league. If we stay together now in this tough moment, we can come back on Tuesday when we have another game and we want to win.’

Cucurella knows things will not get any easier from here either, as the intensity will only continue to rise for us and our opponents as we enter the business end of the Premier League campaign.

However, we will have home advantage for our next two fixtures in the competition, against Southampton and Leicester City – either side of the first leg of our UEFA Conference League last-16 tie with Copenhagen, also on home soil – and the left-back sees that as an opportunity to secure some important points with the backing of the Stamford Bridge supporters.

‘Now we have 12 games left, so every game is important. Every team we play against is playing for something, either for the Champions League or to avoid relegation, so every game is a battle.

‘We need to stay together and do the things we do when we play well and we have a tough game. We need to stay together and keep working. On Tuesday it is a very important game. We have two games in a row at home so we have to try to win those two games.’