Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel insists Cesar Azpilicueta is in his plans.

Azpilicueta has found himself on the bench in the opening weeks of the campaign amid Chelsea's transforming squad, but Tuchel insisted the 33-year-old Azpilicueta still has a vital role to play at Stamford Bridge despite all the off-field changes.

Asked how tough it is not to select Azpilicueta in the starting line-up, Tuchel replied: “At the moment it is one of the toughest decisions because he trains so well and is in such good shape and status mentally.

“He is pushing everybody and is fully committed – it's normally what you want on the field.

“But if we play 4-4-2, it's between him or Reece James. It's a luxury problem we have but when we changed to a back five (against Leicester) we had the chance to have both of them on the pitch.

“Without tough decisions we will get nowhere. We are used to competing for every title at Chelsea, competing at the highest level.

“If we don't have tough decisions it will simply not happen. We hope to have 60 matches but to have 60 matches we have to have a squad where everybody is ready to play and have a lot of difficult decisions.

“On Saturday we ended up, more or less, in a situation where we had almost no more central defenders on the bench.

“Now we had N'Golo (Kante) injured and Conor Gallagher with a yellow-red card.

“So there are not enough tough decisions at the moment. I would like to have more of these, that would mean we are in full competition mode."