Chelsea boss Graham Potter explained his team selection for defeat at Tottenham.
Potter made six changes for the 2-0 reverse on Sunday.
He said, The fact there was a third game in a week [after Dortmund] made it difficult to keep picking the same XI. We played in Dortmund on a Wednesday, returned at 4am, then played a Premier League game on a Saturday. There was one change to the Dortmund game today, which was Raheem [Sterling] in for Misha [Mykhailo Mudryk].
"Ruben Loftus-Cheek, for example, Thiago Silva and Reece James were unable to play against Southampton. That is just where we're at. I've tried to explain many times about long-term injuries, players are just not able to play three games in a week [after them]. I have a duty of care to them, and to their welfare, to make sure they're not on the pitch and risking injury.
"If Reece James, god forbid, injures himself because of an overload issue because he hasn't had time to recover or play three games in a week, that is on me. Obviously, I take the consequences which are we change the team. But from West Ham to Dortmund to this game, I don't think there are too many changes."
No Mateo Kovacic, what was the reason for that? And the other absentees?
Mateo was ill. The rest were unfortunate to be out of the squad."
On drawing another blank in front of goal, Potter said: "I think it's a combination of a few things. It's an easy question to ask and not a bad question at all it's not the easiest one to answer either. Sometimes you go through moments when you create chances and don't score them, which we had against Dortmund and Southampton.
"Today I don't think was a game of that. There were minimal chances for both teams in a tight game. The first goal was always going to be important and we didn't get it. There was an element of players coming back from injury, getting them up to speed, and integrating a couple of new ones.
"So as a team, we've not quite there in how we want it to look and function in a good way. And scoring goals is the difficult part of the game."