Widely regarded as the best defensive midfielder as well as the best box-to-box midfielder around, the last few months have been nothing but torrid for the little man from France.

Watching Kante do his thing on his day, you get the feeling of watching a Sports Car put into overdrive; he is just relentless and never tiring. He covers every inch of grass breaking up play, making interceptions and most importantly of all, winning the ball for his teammates; many of whom have confessed that with him around, they just relax and wait for the ball. These qualities are what have endeared him to the heart of every true Football Fan.

Fast forward to the World cup final where he had arguably his worst performance in a France shirt; he was substituted after just 55 minutes of the match, with the score at 2-1. There were rumours afterwards that he had been struggling with an unidentified injury. This was to be the beginning of his injury struggles as he also played the Europa League final in Baku inspite of his knee injury, where he needed pain-killing injections to play.

Kante has had almost a half-dozen other injury issues - ranging from ankle problems to hamstring complaints - throughout this season causing him to miss a total of 14 games. When he has been available, Kante has not had the same impact in recent years and remarkably, Chelsea are winning more without him in the side. Chelsea have only won 33.3 per cent of their league games with Kante in the team and 87.5% without him. In all competitions it gets slightly better but they have still won only 36.8% with him and a surprising 71.4% without him.

Against Newcastle , Kante struggled, missing the big chance of the game and uncharacteristically failing to dominate his opponents through the midfield. He won just 29.4% of his 17 duels, gave away four fouls and squandering most of his passes.

He just is not himself these days and its left for Lampard and his handlers to work out how to restore him back to his former state.

He's a good player, but I guess a time 'll come when that which u can do becomes harder as days goes by