Thomas Tuchel has picked the strongest team he could for today’s match against Norwich, given the injuries to several first team players.
One area where there is serious competition is in central midfield, and speaking to the Chelsea official website before the game, Tuchel explained why he had plumped for Jorginho and Mateo Kovacic as his final choice:
“Ruben [Loftus-Cheek] ]is very likely to come on and he would have deserved to start,” Tuchel explained in a flash interview moments after the teams were announced.
“He is right to feel he should be in there because he did excellent in the last matches. We went for N’Golo and Jorginho as a combination in the Champions League. Jorginho was man of the match, so it is not the moment to take him straight out. It is a tough one. We went for Kova because Kova and Jorgi have played a lot of matches together.”
We certainly thought Ruben had a great chance of playing today, but Tuchel’s reasoning is sound, and we’re sure we will see RLC used in the second half.
We may even see him deployed out of position in the front 3, given that’s where we’re short of numbers. Certainly if we don’t break down Norwich in the first hour, we will see the silky Cobham graduate soon after.
The Jorginho Kovacic partnership hasn’t always been popular, but as Tuchel says, they have played a lot of games together, and when the rest of the team has been disrupted by injury, that’s vital to have.
