The Blues have included January signings Joao Felix, Mykhailo Mudryk and Enzo Fernandez, however that has come at the expense of the 33-year-old experienced striker, who featured in all six of our Group E encounters.

Chelsea face Borussia Dortmund in the round of 16, with the first leg coming up in 11 days’ time now, however we will be travelling without the former Dortmund forward.

Potter has explained the difficult decision not to include Aubameyang…

‘I don’t think it’s going to be difficult [not having Aubameyang] because Pierre’s a professional and of course I understand he will be disappointed. It was a tough decision, a tough call, we had three coming in and two had to go out, so he was the one that missed out.

‘He’s done nothing wrong at all. We wanted to give David some game time today, in terms of seeing where he’s at and give him that opportunity. We saw that one flash of what he’s got. Pierre’s just unfortunate and he’ll be fighting for his place for the rest of the season.’

Our head coach also added that he felt it was always going to be a tough decision, whoever missed out.

‘Whichever decision we made there was always going to be a conversation about it, of course, but it was my decision. It was a tough decision, absolutely, but sometimes you have to make these calls and like I said it is absolutely nothing bad against him. He’s done nothing wrong at all,' he added.

‘It’s tough because I am empathic, so I understand his disappointment, but I’ve got a responsibility which is to make these tough decisions and then articulate them as honestly and as well as I can to the player, and then respect the fact that he’s going to be disappointed. He’s handled it very well, trained today fantastically, which is what I would expect. He’s been a top guy for us.’

Aubameyang has not started a game for Chelsea since the restart on 27 December, and Potter has explained what he can do to get himself back into the team.

‘Absolutely he can [get back in], everything’s up for grabs. He’s got to keep working, training like he did today and be ready to play, because football changes quickly. That’s the nature of the game.’