Chelsea decided to recall Nathan Ake from his loan at Bournemouth due to growing concerns over the fitness of Marcos Alonso.

Standard Sport understands that Alonso has been troubled by a minor leg injury since he joined in August.

The left wing-back was signed from Fiorentina for £23million and is believed to have begun his Chelsea career with muscular discomfort in his upper leg.

It took him three weeks to make his debut and while the problem was not serious to begin with, it has been getting worse over the past month.

It has not been severe enough to stop Alonso from playing — the 26-year-old has started the last 14 Premier League games, which coincided with Chelsea’s club record run of 13 straight wins. But with the rigours of the season and his injury starting to take more of a toll, Chelsea wanted to bring Ake back as cover and open up the possibility of rotating more, so giving Alonso the possibility to rest his injury.

Ake impressed on a season-long loan at Watford last term playing as a leftback and showed his growing confidence at the highest level at Bournemouth, albeit as a centre-half.

He was supposed to spend the campaign there but Chelsea decided to trigger the clause in the deal that would allow them to bring him back this month.

Coach Antonio Conte said that Ake’s fine performances and ability to play in a number of positions was the reason the Holland Under-21 international is at Stamford Bridge again.

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He said: "Chelsea is his home and I’m pleased to have him back. Ake gives me important options, because we are playing with three central defenders. He can play on the left and in the middle. Also it’s important to see during training if he can play as a wingback. I wanted to bring back Ake because he gives me a good opportunity, good solutions.”

But it is believed Conte will particularly want to field Ake as a left wingback in training and have a close look at how he performs in the role.

Meanwhile, Victor Moses is convinced Chelsea have the mental toughness to cope with leading from the front in the title race.

Conte’s side lost their first game for four months last week as Spurs secured a 2-0 win at White Hart Lane.

Chelsea still boast a five-point lead over closest challengers Liverpool but the defeat has given hope to the rest of their rivals that they can be caught, including Tottenham and Arsenal. But Moses said: “Everyone is going to want to stop us now but we’ve got a strong group of lads here and a lot of character. Teams are going to want to stop us playing but we’ve been ready for every game this season, because everyone is working hard.

“Even when we’re 1-0 down, we still believe in ourselves, we know we’ve got quality players who can create goals. We’re a unit and we’ve got a manager who has given us a lot of confidence.”

Chelsea were drawn against Brentford in the FA Cup fourth round last night and Moses insists trying to win that competition won’t negatively affect their title hopes. He added: “I can’t see the FA Cup distracting us.”