Chelsea have built a squad so deep that they can wheel out a fully different team in the league and the cups.
That spreads the minutes around nicely, as well as showing there are at least two quality options per position. Yet no squad is every really deep enough to be fully immune from injury or fatigue, and Chelsea are proving that now.
One slight flaw in the construction of their mega-team was recruiting two £100m midfielders who have to fly to South America for their international football in every break. We have the same conversation after every set of internationals: what to do with Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo?
Chelsea’s midfield stretched despite mega spend
They won’t be back from duty until tomorrow, giving them time for perhaps one training session on Friday before the Saturday lunch-time kick off. We’d be surprised to see them both start – but the other options are limited too, as Enzo Maresca admitted in his press conference today:
“Renato [Veiga played in midfield] in some games but he also played 180 minutes with Portugal. Cesare [Casadei] did very well but he also played both games with Italy U21s. The ones that are going to play are not going to be 100% because they are human beings. Hopefully we can find the right balance.”
As far as we know, Romeo Lavia is fit. So he will start in the middle without a doubt. Then alongside him we will likely see the two South Americans play about 45 minutes each, plus likely cameos from the likes of Veiga or even the lesser-spotted Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall against his old team.
We have more than enough firepower to beat Leicester without a first choice, fresh midfield, but it’s going to be harder than it could have been.
