Not for the first time this season, the Blues began brightly on the road, but unlike at Leeds we capped our early dominance by taking the lead, Raheem Sterling putting us ahead midway through the opening period.

However, the Saints were soon level, and just as at Elland Road we didn’t deal with the setback of conceding well, letting a second goal in before the break. There was to be no equaliser, and Tuchel outlined his early thoughts on the defeat afterwards.

‘We are not tough enough to win these away matches at the moment,’ he said.

‘It was the same story at Leeds. At Leeds we thought the problem was we didn’t score in the first 25 minutes, and they pushed us off balance with two goals and we couldn’t find any answers.

‘Today we scored, everything was okay, but one set-piece again, one sloppy defending again, and we were off balance.

‘We didn’t react. We were lucky not to concede a third goal at the beginning of the second half, and we were not tough enough as a team to react.’

Tuchel considered how we could have avoided conceding the two goals

‘You stop it with pure mentality, defending mentality so there is no superiority for the opponent, just toughen up as a team.

‘I don’t like to talk about it normally because you can’t prove it with data or body position, but it’s like this. Both goals are soft goals and shouldn’t happen if you want to win a Premier League match. You need to be tougher than that.’

Our recent performances and injury issues have taken Tuchel back to last winter

‘It reminds me of Juventus last season. We played a fantastic match at Stamford Bridge, and after that we had Chilly off for eight months and Kante for eight weeks.

‘It was the same against Tottenham this season. We had a fantastic performance and after that our key player says goodbye for six weeks minimum, and then it’s red cards, and Ruben is off injured, and Reece is off with illness.

‘It’s key player after key player. But more importantly, if these key players are missing we need to show a different mentality. It’s not enough at the moment to win at Leeds and Southampton.

‘We’re humble enough to know we can lose football matches, even if we hate it, but it’s too easy to push us off the track.

‘The line is so thin between excuses and explanations,' added the boss. 'I don’t want to go down this road and give any room for excuses to anybody.

‘The closing of the transfer window will help. We will know who has full commitment and what role everybody needs to play and to fulfil, and everybody including myself needs to step up our level of performance. It’s an okay performance, not a disaster, but okay is never good enough.’