The surprise is that it has taken this long for the absence of Eden Hazard to be felt quite so keenly at Chelsea. Back in autumn, and with regular first-team football still a happy novelty for much of their young squad, there was an adventure and innocence about the group which suggested that the loss of their best player could be less problematic than all logic dictated.

Five defeats in seven league matches, including home losses without scoring against West Ham United, Bournemouth and now Southampton, and it would seem that cold reality has finally dawned.

To his credit, manager Frank Lampard has repeatedly dodged making an issue of how the summer transfer ban was compounded by Hazard’s sale to Real Madrid, but the statistics are now compelling.

Hazard ended last season as comfortably Chelsea’s most creative Premier League player, scoring 16 goals and providing 15 assists. Even the combined tallies so far this season of Willian, Christian Pulisic and Callum Hudson-Odoi are on course to be only very marginally higher.

Average out the contributions of Willian, Pulisic and Hudson-Odoi and the comparison becomes even more stark. Put together, Willian, Pulisic and Hudson-Odoi are scoring and assisting on average every 294 and 330 minutes.