We haven’t always come away with the result our performances have deserved in recent matches, but the Croatian and his team-mates are working hard to identify where they can improve to put things right in our upcoming games, starting with our trip to Tottenham.

‘I think we’ve had some really good, good games in the beginning of the season and in the last four or five games we were a little bit unlucky,’ said Kovacic. ‘We could have scored more goals but we didn’t and then in the end the Premier League is really a tough league so if you don’t score it is probable that you can concede and that’s what happened.

‘We missed maybe a little bit of the aggression, but we had the fight. It’s been a time of processing that. I think that these kind of things are normal, but now we have lost quite a lot of games so we need to focus and to fight for the next one.’

He also turned an eye to our next opponents and highlighted what we need to be wary of given their own good form.

‘Every area will be important because it is a team that has high quality, but up front they are quite a difficult team. We like to have the ball, so it will be a game where we need to pay attention to the counter-attacks and to stop them well, because if they have space they’re a team that can really hurt us.’

Kovacic also dismissed any suggestion that inexperience has played a part in our recent dip given our youthful squad, instead praising the attitude of the younger members of our side.

‘These young players, they are really good and they take the pressure really well,’ he insisted. ‘If you’re at Chelsea it doesn’t matter how old you are, you need to be ready to play every week at a high level and that is what we all do, but sometimes in football everything doesn’t go how you want, that was the problem in our last games.

‘I don’t like to mention just one, because all of them are doing great and they are Chelsea’s future. The young guys are great guys, laughing all the time, and we also like to joke. It’s an amazing team and we have a lot of fun on the pitch and outside the pitch as well.’