Manuel Akanji admitted he tried to 'protect' debutant Abdukodir Khusanov after the Man City defender endured a nightmare life in the Premier League.
Khusanov's weak header back to Ederson led to Chelsea taking the lead in the third minute, before he was shown a yellow card in the fourth.
The 20-year-old looked visibly shaken and although things improved, Pep Guardiola brought him off for John Stones nine minutes into the second half as City won 3-1.
Akanji, who played at center back alongside Khusanov, said: “I tried to protect him and not put him in situations where things could get really difficult, especially against a team like Chelsea who have so many good individual players.
'I just tried to pick him up and tell him not to think too much, but to go ahead and maybe play the safer pass back to Eddy (Ederson) in his next action and win his next game to get his confidence back to get. I think that's all you can really do.”
Khusanov was born in Uzbekistan and spent the past three years playing club football in Belarus and France before City signed him from Lens for £33m earlier this week. He is the first Uzbek player to sign for a Premier League club.
Guardiola added after the match that he could not speak directly to Khusanov as he does not yet speak English, but Akanji stressed that he is confident his new teammate will overcome the language barrier in time.
“He (Khusanov) says he understands English better than French, so I speak English with him,” Akanji said. 'I think he will improve his English, that is necessary because we have to communicate. It is especially important as a central defender so that we can help our teammates around us. I think he understands a lot. He can't really talk well yet, but he will.'
City's next match is at home to Club Brugge in the Champions League on Wednesday, where they need to win to qualify for the Champions League play-offs.
Anything less than victory will see them eliminated from the league stage and Akanji stressed that every game is 'big' for Guardiola's side if they are to win silverware this season. The last time they went trophyless in a season was during Guardiola's first season in charge in 2016/17.
“We now only have big games for the rest of the season because we have put ourselves in this position in the Champions League and in the league,” Akanji said. “If we want to have a chance of lifting a trophy this year, we know we have to win every game we have and that is the mentality.”
Comments