Reece James facing Chelsea crossroads as he targets return after injury hell

If Rio Ferdinand is right, Reece James phone will have buzzing off the hook for much of Wednesday morning as England’s players chase the low-down on their new manager Thomas Tuchel.

“I know for a fact these players will be sitting there ringing each other,” former England defender Ferdinand explained on his social media channel Rio Reacts. “They’ll be calling all their mates that played under him. ‘What was he like?’. That’s what the conversations will be.”

For James, who won the Champions League under Tuchel at Chelsea. England recall may just have gotten a little more likely. But remains, for now, a long way off. The aim, as it was at the start of the summer, is more straightforward: “I have one goal. My goal is to stay on the pitch.”

In the same international break as Tuchel was signing his new contract with the FA,

James – who has not started a game for England in more than two years – was making his latest return to Chelsea training, desperate once again to put years of injury frustration behind him.

Having recovered from the hamstring surgery that wiped out most of the second half of last season and ruined any chance of going to Euro 2024, James play a prominent part in the Blues’s pre-season, only to suffer another hamstring injury in the final minutes. Before he was due to substitute at the end of the club’s US tour.

Even then, the hope was that his absence โปรโมชั่น ufabet would be brief – James was already due to suspended for the first three Premier League games of the season. But instead it has taken until after the campaign’s second international break for the 24-year-old to rejoin Enzo Maresca’s group.

Maresca will, presumably, take a cautious approach with a player. Who has made just 19 league starts since the beginning of 2022-23 but, when fit, is still among the club’s two or three best. It remains to seen whether. He will even ready to be among the substitutes for Sunday’s trip to Liverpool.