“He’s good” – Enzo Maresca signals major change in Chelsea strategy over world class player | OneFootball

Reece James is enjoying his longest spell of consistent availability in years, and a lot of the credit for that should go to Chelsea’s medical staff and manager.

Enzo Maresca and his team have been extremely cautious when managing James, and have rarely let him start more than one game a week. In fact, he hasn’t started a game for Maresca since the opening day of the season.

While the Blues have done all that good work building him up, it’s England who have benefited. Thomas Tuchel started his old favourite James both against Andorra and Serbia in the last week. That means he’s had more England starts than Chelsea starts this season.

Maresca asked about delicate James balance

Reece James playing for England. (Photo by Carl Recine/Getty Images)

In his pre-match press conference today, Enzo Maresca was asked about James and how he was planning to use him, given the full back has already played more than his usual rations for the fortnight.

The Italian coach basically threw his hand up and explained there wasn’t much he could do:

“In the moment that any player joins the international team it’s free to play the minutes that the manager thinks that he has to play, so it’s not in my hands,” Maresca said.

But he also hinted at a change in strategy:

“When Reece is here we try to manage him as much as we can. Since I joined the club I’m doing that with him, with Romeo [Lavia], with Wes [Fofana], with the ones that in the past they had problems, but I think now Reece is showing that he’s quite fit to play two, three games in a week.”

Maresca on James ramping up

Asked to  confirm whether that means the full back will be potentially ready to play tomorrow, Maresca confirmed:

“Yeah, he’s good.”

We’ll believe it when we see it – but it’s promising.