Embarrassing mistake: Why Chelsea playmaker won’t feature tonight; but Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall will | OneFootball

Yesterday we wrote an article about Joe Cole’s comments on Chelsea’s team for tonight’s Conference League semi final against Real Betis. We could work out why the former Blues winger was so convinced that Romeo Lavia wasn’t going to feature.

Having started on the bench at the weekend, he should have been one of the first names on the team sheet, given what he offered.

Lavia will be watching from the stands

Romeo Lavia on the sidelines. (Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images)

“Are we missing something?”, we asked. As it turns out, yes we were. You’ll have to forgive us – it’s the 55th game of a long season coming up tonight – time for a holiday.

It had completely slipped our mind that Lavia, who was left out of the initial Conference League squad along with the likes of Wesley Fofana and Cole Palmer, hadn’t been added in after the group stage, when other senior players were.

It of course made sense at the time, with the Belgian struggling to get any time on the pitch at all, but now it’s a real frustration – this would be an ideal game to have him controlling the tempo in the middle of the pitch against a tactically astute opposition, and it’s also a handy way of increasing out tactical options with the way it allows Moises Caicedo to right back if needed.

Dewsbury-Hall bumped up to more higher in the pecking order

That all makes total sense, as does Cole’s prediction that Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall will play a significant role in tonight’s game.

We’re still not sure if the former Leicester midfielder starts. There should be little reason to change the team from Sunday beyond perhaps dropping Reece James for Malo Gusto for fitness reasons. But we do expect KDH and plenty of other stalwarts from the Conference League campaign so far to get cameos at the very least.