Enzo Maresca says Tyrique George ‘probably isn’t 100 per cent’ ready to replace Noni Madueke in Chelsea’s starting XI, but he must consider the teenager due to the club’s injury problems.
Chelsea’s desperately poor run of form continued against Brighton last Friday, with Kaoru Mitoma scoring one of the goals of the season and Yankuba Minteh netting twice to consign Maresca’s men to a third defeat in four in all competitions.
Noni Madueke suffered a hamstring injury to compound Chelsea’s problems during a miserable outing at the Amex Stadium and the England winger is expected to be sidelined for the club’s next six matches.
It leaves Maresca with a number of selection dilemmas ahead of Chelsea’s trip to Aston Villa, with the likes of Nicolas Jackson, Wesley Fofana, Benoit Badiashile and Romeo Lavia also nursing fitness problems.
Jadon Sancho was largely ineffective after replacing Madueke in the 21st minute versus the Seagulls, before Reece James, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall and academy product George were all introduced in the second period to little effect.
‘Fortunately, we don’t have any injury updates,’ Maresca told reporters at his pre-match press conference this morning.
‘The ones who have injuries are the same. We don’t have any more additional injuries.
‘Noni will probably be out until maybe the international break and the rest… Nico [Jackson] out, Wes [Fofana] out, Benoit [Badiashile] out, Romeo [Lavia] out, Marc Guiu out.
‘Probably after the international break we can have back most of the injured players, almost all of them or all of them.
‘For us, it can be a big boost.’
While George could be in line to make his 13th appearance of the season at Villa Park, Maresca is reluctant to put too much pressure on the 19-year-old forward.
‘For sure, he’s a young one. He’s probably not ready 100 per cent but because of the amount of injuries we have, we need to use the ones we have,’ the Chelsea head coach added.
‘He’s a young profile, he’s doing well and because, in some moments, we don’t also have different options, we need to give him chances.
‘Hopefully we can give him more chances and he can help us.’
Chelsea could return to the top four with victory over Villa but Maresca knows it will be a very difficult test against Unai Emery’s side, despite their five-game winless streak in the top flight.
‘Since the new project with Emery, they are doing fantastic. You can see this season in the Champions League that they finished in the first eight. That is an unbelievable achievement for them,’ he said.
‘The are fighting to finish top four also this season so the team is very good.
‘They know clearly the way that they want to play, both on and off the ball, and the manager is probably one of the best.’
On Chelsea’s target for the remainder of the season, Maresca explained: ‘We’ve said it many times, we spent almost the entire season in the top four.
‘Now, we have just 14 games to go so, for sure, now the target for us is to finish in the top four and finish in the best way.
‘We will try to do our best to achieve that, knowing that the difficult moment that we have now is probably the reason why, and the moist important reason why is because of the injury situation… we have five or six players significant players who are out.
‘I was watching, two days ago, the first game against Villa and, unfortunately, we have five players out from that game: Wes, Noni, Nico, Romeo, so the team has changed completely,
‘It’s something that has happened with many clubs this season… City have injuries, Arsenal have injuries and we’re going to try our best to win games with the amount of injuries we have.’
