“They can play together” – Chelsea manager hints at changing his preferred team | OneFootball

The big news from Enzo Maresca’s press conference yesterday was that Romeo Lavia is back fit.

We’ve already discussed the difficulties that this gives Maresca in terms of team selection. Lavia was excellent in preseason and in the early moments of the season, but he’s been out even since, which has put a lot on Moises Caicedo.

The Ecuadorian has been great, so how do we get them in the team together? It’s very tempting to try out both in the same side as it would give us such a nice shield in front of the defence, as well as plenty of ability in terms of moving the ball forward.

Romeo Lavia in midfield for Chelsea.

Enzo dreams of a powerful midfield double team

But adding Lavia would mean removing an attacker, and with so many of them in good form, that’s a tricky things for Maresca to justify. He spoke to the Chelsea official website today about how he’d deal with the issue of using both:

“Romeo will give us more or less the same as Moi,’ began the Italian. ‘He played one league game for us this season against City and I think it was a very good game from Romeo.

“I’m very excited thinking that soon we can have Moi and Romeo both fit 100 per cent, because I think both together playing that position, they can give us a lot. They can compete for one position and they can play together, for sure.”

To us it seems natural that, especially against top teams, A Lavia-Caicedo-Enzo midfield would have a nice balance. That would mean shifting Cole Palmer to the right, and assuming Nicolas Jackson plays up front, means a real log jam of talent for the left – Noni Madueke, Pedro Neto, Mykhailo Mudryk, Christopher Nkunku, Jadon Sancho and Joao Felix would all be scrapping over that one place as it stands.