As Chelsea’s January continues to progress at a glacial pace, various sources are trying to figure out what the hold up is. We don’t want to be impatient, but the lack of activity even in terms of just shuffling a few loan players around is really puzzling.
The gaps in this first team picture are clear – so why is nothing being done to address them? One of those issue is in midfield, and that was never more obvious than in our match against Wolves on Monday night. Enzo Fernandez and Romeo Lavia are out injured, so Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall had to drop in alongside Moises Caicedo. We got the win, but it was hardly convincing.
There was a chilling moment when Caicedo went down clutching his knee and looked in real pain. At that moment it looked like we were about to be without a single fit senior central midfielder. Fortunately he was ok to continue – and play the full 90. The Ecuadorian is being run into the ground. Why are we just waiting for tragedy to strike rather than getting ahead of the issue?
Chelsea are “open to the idea” of signing a new midfielder this month
That’s the exact question Simon Johnson is asking in The Athletic’s piece today about our midfield.
Worryingly he talks about Enzo Maresca’s favouring of full-backs inverting into midfield, as though that’s a viable long term solution. We saw Marc Cucurella fill in there for the final few minutes on Monday – surely that’s a cry for help from the manager rather than a long term plan.
He does conclude that the club are “open to the idea” of signing a new midfielder this month, but only at the right price and under the right conditions. We understand why – they’re probably thinking “we’ve already got Lesley Ugochukwu and Andrey Santos on the books.”
So in that case, recall them! Johnson thinks it’s unlikely we will – we can’t get our head around it.
