It 'irresponsible' to play Kante against Wolves: Chelsea boss Tuchel

Chelsea manager Thomas Tuchel has admitted it was "close to irresponsible" letting N'Golo Kante play 90 minutes against Wolves.

The French midfielder had only recently returned from a knee injury suffered against Juventus in November and Tuchel was therefore told to limit his game time to just one half of action.

And Tuchel has revealed he will not be making the same mistake with Kante against Brentford in the Carabao Cup quarter-final on Wednesday.

"What we did with N'Golo Kante, 90 minutes, was close to being irresponsible," explained Tuchel. "Will he be involved in the squad against Brentford? No.

"Would it be possible if it was the last game of the season? Yes, but we cannot do this and I will not do it. We will now give him time to recover and prepare him for the Aston Villa match.

"To have a team with 13 or 14 players for one match, this is a problem but not a big problem. But from the match we have Trevoh Chalobah injured, we have N'Golo Kante and Mateo Kovacic involved, which was taking a huge risk, and now we are paying for this.

"They cannot just simply start five matches in two weeks - it's impossible. We cannot let players suffer because other players are not there."