Liam Rosenior joins stars at Cobham to watch player he’s not yet used in first team | OneFootball

Romeo Lavia returned to competitive action for Chelsea this afternoon, playing for the Under-21s against Leeds at Cobham.

An exciting snippet of news about Chelsea’s injury situation which came out 24 hours ago has now been confirmed.

Bobby Vincent of Football.London was among those breaking the news yesterday that Romeo Lavia – who has been absent with his latest injury since the start of November, was set for a return to (semi) competitive football. The Belgian was slated to line up for the Blues’ Development Squad game against Leeds Under-21s, and he did just that.

Reports today say that he completed 45 minutes at Cobham, starting the game, which saw the young Blues go 2-0 up and then draw 2-2, in a strange mirror of last week’s senior game which had the same pattern of scoring.

First team stars in attendance to see Lavia return

Romeo Lavia playing for the Under-21s. (Photo by Darren Walsh/Chelsea FC)

The piece also notes that there were a number of first team players in attendance – Cole Palmer, Liam Delap, Benoit Badiashile, Malo Gusto, Mamadou Sarr and Wesley Fofana were all apparently there watching on after their own session finished.

Also in attendance, perhaps more significantly, was first team manager Liam Rosenior. He’s yet to have a chance to use Lavia in a game, and will have been very curious to see the Belgian in action for the first time.

In other news…

One Chelsea player has turned down a new contract offered to them recently – we’re not sure who it was, but we have a good guess…

Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo are at the front of the queue for new deals – unsurprising given their status in the squad. It will be very interesting to see where common ground is found in terms of their salary.

Check out the latest edition of Simon Phillips’ SPTC podcast here: