"When the season ended we agreed he stays for pre-season and he’d get the minutes he deserves. Unfortunately, before the first friendly, Tino was the guy to test positive for Covid and really suffered for ten, 12 days. You could see today that it was the first time he was back on the pitch and it was a lot for him to start with 30 minutes.
"So he was unlucky with the situation, he had no responsibility for it. So, honestly, I can’t really judge him and what I saw today in five, ten minutes was very promising again. He is strong, confident, creative, assists and scores a lot of goals in training for us.
"I just wished we had the possibility to see him against Peterborough, Bournemouth and Arsenal so he could really make a statement. Now the season more or less starts again. So he has suffered without having any responsibility for it.
"The situation is maybe a bit unchanged for him. The most important thing is for him to get fit, he had some trouble to adapt to the intensity. I think he struggles a little from his illness, so we have to be very careful about him."
On Chalobah, the Blues manager added: "We know him from Lorient and Chalo has done very well in pre-season,’ said Tuchel. ‘We wanted to continue in the back three, so there was space in the back until [Kurt] Zouma and Toni [Rudiger] arrived. Then there was one space left but then Andreas Christensen, Reece [James] and Azpi [Cesar Azpilicueta] are back then there is a huge competition for him."He’s done very well in both games and within his potential and limits that was nice to see. He played a good match, I agree."