Mikel Arteta has urged Thomas Partey to step up and show just why Arsenal put so much effort into signing him.

The Ghanaian midfielder was supposed to be a game changer when he was poached from Atletico Madrid for £45million last summer. But that is not quite how things have worked out so far for the 27-year-old.

Arteta said: “Hopefully we will see the best version of Thomas at Sheffield United on Sunday and against Slavia Prague next week. Now that he has got a sequence of two or three games I think we’ll see him finishing the season in a really strong way.

“It’s very difficult to make a proper assessment of Thomas’ performances so far because he has missed six months and that is a long time. He is still adapting to our way of playing, which is different to what he did at Atletico, but he we can all see what he brings to the team.

“It’s about him finding the level of consistency that we need from him because he has the capacity that we can build a team that can play around him. The biggest difficulty he has had so far is that he has not been fit. Then every time he recovered, he missed the next game.

“He has not had time to prepare himself physically to play at the highest level and that has obviously had an impact because the Premier League demands real fitness.”

Adama Traore broke Fulham’s hearts with a 92nd minute winner at Craven Cottage.

The Cottagers looked set to hold on for a vital point in their relegation battle.

But the winger hit them on the break in the dying stages and smashed one beyond Areola at the near post to move Nuno Espirito Santo’s side into 12th in the table.

Scott Parker looked distraught and Mario Lemina was in tears walking off the pitch as the West Londoners have just six games left to save themselves from the drop.

Fulham are 18th having played 32 games and are still three points behind Newcastle who have played just 30.

Thomas Tuchel has told Tammy Abraham there is no easy way back into the Chelsea team.

Tuchel, who replaced Frank Lampard on January 26, said: “I don’t think he’s the top scorer since I arrived. So I can only judge what I see and what we have together from the first minute when I arrived.

“I have seen a bright young man in front of me. A guy who is self-confident, who has a lot of talent. But it cannot be that in a period of such good results that suddenly the guys who don’t play are the winners.

“This cannot be. Because first of all, you need to be in the squad and if you are in a winning squad, you have your part in this winning squad.

“And it cannot be that sometimes the people who don’t make it to the squad are in the end the winners, although the team is winning many games. This is not logical to me. We are aware that he scored, we are aware that he scored a lot in the cup.

“We had some tactical changes he had to accept. We accept that he was injured. OK, so now it’s a difficult time to try things out because while he is injured the engine keeps on running.”

Chelsea midfield dynamo N’golo Kante was recorded netting a cheeky finish against Kepa Arrizabalaga in training.

The midfielder was assisted by Tammy Abraham and slotted the ball calmly into the back of the net.

The finish was followed by cheers from his fellow teammates who commended his finish.