Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel has taken the decision to send some players away from the senior squad that made the trip to the US.

Tuchel has sent Billy Gilmour, Harvey Vale and Tino Anjorin to the Chelsea Under-23s pre-season camp, also in the US.

Tuchel has taken this decision so he can focus on preparing his first-team squad for the new campaign.

Tuchel travelled with a 29-man squad, but he has said he wants a much smaller squad to work with.

The German said: “It is never easy and I didn’t like to do it because everyone deserves to stay with the squad, but we had a very big squad already and then players came additionally on top.

“Some players like [Mateo] Kovacic are not fit again to train with the group so we cut it down and sent some young players to the reserve team who are also in America.

“It’s a very difficult decision because nobody deserved to go. I would have loved to have had everybody here because Tino, Harvey and Billy had trained at a very high level and it would also have been nice to see them in some matches.

“But in the end we had to take the decision to keep the quality high in training so we decided for 24 players as a maximum and that’s why we went a bit smaller.”

Armando Broja has also left camp to return to England.