“My personal opinion” – Maresca on loan plans for two new Chelsea wonderkids | OneFootball

As you’d expect, three quarters of Enzo Maresca’s press conference today was about Mykhailo Mudryk’s failed doping test.

Given that that’s huge news, and given tomorrow’s game against Shamrock Rovers is pretty small news, that’s no surprise.

But there were some interesting snippets in there on other topics. First up was Josh Acheampong. He signed a new deal today, and Maresca was asked whether he would now go on loan now that his future was secured.

The manager said no to that:

“My personal opinion is that he needs to stay close with us,” Maresca commented.

Of course his opinion isn’t the only one that counts, but it should have a lot of sway. We expect Acheampong to get plenty of action in the second half of the season, so a loan doesn’t seem necessary anyway.

The question was then extended to Acheampong’s fellow Cobham prodigy, Tyrique George. He’s been gradually appearing more and more for the first team, and could play tomorrow too.

“We have three games before January and then after these, we will decide if we need to do something [about a loan]” Maresca said.

“For sure, Tyrique is going to get minutes.”

Conference League providing perfect platform for next generation

Tyrique George on his senior debut against Noah. (Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Of course we weren’t happy to end up in the Conference League rather than the Europa League this season, but we always said there was a silver lining if we ended up using it to blood a lot of young players.

We would still liked to have seen more of them in the course of the competition – but the last few games we’ve seen a lot of Cobham action, and that trend should continue tomorrow in a dead rubber at home against Shamrock Rovers.