Thomas Tuchel is cautiously optimistic the injuries sustained by Hakim Ziyech and Trevoh Chalobah in Chelsea’s trip to Wolverhampton will not rule the duo out for a sustained period.

The Blues were held to a stalemate at Molineux and lost Chalobah in the first half after the 22-year-old picked up a knock and was replaced by Saul Niguez.

Mateo Kovacicn, meanwhile, came on for Ziyech halfway through the second half after the latter sustained a calf injury.

Tuchel, however, remained hopeful the injuries were not particularly serious.

‘Trevoh, hopefully it’s just painful, but at the moment it is very painful,’ he told PA Sport after the game.

‘We still have hopes that it’s not serious, but we need to wait for further examination.

‘And for Hakim, I don’t think it’s bad, he got hit on his nerve and the calf was tight so he was limping and we had to take him off of course.’

Missing seven players because of COVID-19, Tuchel named only six players on the bench for the trip to the West Midlands and acknowledged the injuries to Chalobah and Ziyech would stretch his resources even further.

‘Well this would be funny,’ he continued.

‘This is what I mean; we can survive a game but we will pay the price at some point, that’s for sure. And maybe we already have with all our midfielders.’

Chelsea had asked the Premier League to postpone their game against Wolves in light of their COVID-19 outbreak, but the request was denied.

The game was one of three fixtures to go ahead as scheduled on Sunday afternoon, with Everton’s trip to Leicester the only cancellation.

That was a marked change from the previous day, when five of the six games scheduled were called off because of coronavirus.

“We are deeply disappointed that our application was rejected as we felt we had a strong case for the postponement of today’s match on the grounds of players’ health and safety,” a Chelsea spokesperson said.

Tuchel added: ‘The players were worried about their health because we had several positive results in several days. […] The decisions are the decisions and I understand people who say we have 14 players, but we are putting players at risk.’