Romeo Lavia is a major doubt for Chelsea’s clash with Tottenham, having suffered yet another injury setback.
Lavia was one of the Blues’s standout players during their fine run of form last autumn, which saw Enzo Maresca’s side charge to second in the Premier League table by mid-December.
However, the Belgian has made only two Premier League appearances since as he struggles with persistent hamstring issues.
The second of those came as a late substitute against Arsenal just prior to the international break and there was hope that Lavia would be ready to resume a regular role in Maresca’s side heading into the run-in.
However, speaking on Wednesday morning, ahead of tomorrow night’s derby meeting with Spurs, Maresca revealed more bad news in the form of an unspecified setback.
“He was doing better in terms of progress but unfortunately one or two days ago he had again a small problem so we’ll see in the next hours,” Maresca said.
Lavia’s first season at Chelsea was almost entirely wiped out by injury and the 21-year-old has still played just 628 minutes since signing for the club for Southampton.
That is despite the club’s best attempts to manage his workload this term, which have included leaving the former Manchester City man out of their European squad.
Chelsea have had more success in recent months with their use of Reece James, another player whose career has been blighted by hamstring injuries.
The Blues captain made his first England start in two-and-a-half years against Latvia during the international break, having earned a swift recall from former Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel, and marked it with a superb free-kick goal.
Tuchel revealed after that game that he had sought specific assurances from Chelsea over James’s fitness and despite the 25-year-old’s encouraging progress, Maresca insists he will continue to be cautious with the right-back.
“I still think we need to manage Reece,” the Italian said. “The reason why is because you know his history. You know that he’s a player you have to be careful with.
“We want him fit until the end [of the season] so the idea is to try to manage him until the end. Then we’ll see in the future we’ll see if we can go every day, every day, every day. But in this moment, because we need Reece until the end, we try to manage him and probably we are going to do exactly the same until the end.”
