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Chelsea's Ruben Loftus-Cheek
Ruben Loftus-Cheek ‘has to give one step forward to be more stable in the first team’, says his Chelsea manager, José Mourinho. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters
Ruben Loftus-Cheek ‘has to give one step forward to be more stable in the first team’, says his Chelsea manager, José Mourinho. Photograph: Suzanne Plunkett/Reuters

José Mourinho: Chelsea youngsters have to fight to make grade at club

This article is more than 8 years old

Manager wants Ruben Loftus-Cheek to show more when given chance
Kenedy, Baba Rahman and Bertrand Traoré in squad to face Maccabi Tel Aviv

José Mourinho has defended his use of younger players and chose the eve of Chelsea’s Champions League game against Maccabi Tel Aviv to stress the onus is on such as Ruben Loftus-Cheek to prove they should be granted more regular involvement in the first team.

Chelsea are still waiting for an academy graduate to follow in John Terry’s footsteps and cement a regular starting place in the side, for all that Loftus-Cheek is highly regarded, has been training with the senior players since January and is a regular in their match-day squads. The midfielder has travelled to Israel, where a victory could secure passage into the knockout phase, with Kurt Zouma, Kenedy, Baba Rahman, Bertrand Traoré, the goalkeeper Jamal Blackman and the teenage right-back Ola Aina also in the squad.

Yet there has been frustration that only Zouma, secured from St Etienne for around £12.5m, of the younger crop is a regular in the team. The “run of matches” promised to Loftus-Cheek before October’s international break amounted to 45 minutes against Aston Villa in a relatively unfamiliar playmaker’s role before the manager withdrew him at half-time having grown frustrated at a lack of discipline when out of possession. The 19-year-old has not been on the pitch since.

“He is a very talented player, no doubt about it, with ups and downs in his evolution, but he has had chances not many players at his age get in big clubs,” Mourinho said. “It’s easier to get chances in smaller clubs. At big clubs, not many players his age have the opportunities he has had to start matches in the Premier League, Champions League and the cups, to be on the bench for lots of matches consecutively, living and learning with top players. So he is having everything.

“Sometimes young players can argue, rightly or wrongly, that the chances were not too many for them. Ruben is the last one who can complain about that. Everything is in his hands. Even when he goes away with the national [Under-21s] team he has my assistant [Steve Holland] on the coaching staff, so we know every second of his development. Of course he is a player who we have lots of hope for but, sooner or later, he – him, not me – has to give one step forward to be more stable in the first team.”

Loftus-Cheek started against Maccabi in September, impressing in a 4-0 win which Chelsea will hope to replicate at the Sammy Ofer stadium in Haifa. Yet the criticism regularly levelled at Mourinho and Chelsea, who have more than 30 players out on loan, is that younger players are not offered a route into the first team. “But I can give you figures [that disprove that],” the manager said. “In the first-team squad we have seven under-21 players who have 26 starts and 12 substitute appearances this season, and 43 appearances on the bench [when they were] not used.

“OK, Zouma is in his second season at this level and is unleashing himself as a top player, and people forget that he’s 20. We are very happy with him and, to be fair, I’m happy with myself too because, when he came here, he was not the player he is now. I remember the first two matches he played for us in pre-season in 2014 and he was not good. He was very bad. But now he’s a player, fighting with Terry and Cahill hand to hand. But we have 26 starts. It’s a lot in a club like Chelsea when you have a lot of top players.”

There have been suggestions some of the youngsters struggling to gain first-team involvement at their loan clubs – Izzy Brown and Nathan at Vitesse Arnhem, together with Patrick Bamford at Crystal Palace, are cited as examples – may return to Chelsea in January. “But the ones who are not playing at Vitesse, we cannot expect them to play here,” Mourinho said. “They have to fight to play. If they want to play with men and against men, at the top level, they cannot be protected forever. Sometimes ‘evolution’ is not about playing but feeling that it is difficult to play, and feeling the direction they have to go in if they want to be top players in top clubs.”

Zouma is expected to start here, where a win would secure progress if Dynamo Kyiv fail to beat Porto in Portugal, with Eden Hazard most likely to revert to a position on the left having played as a central playmaker in recent games. Although Hazard favours the No10 role, Mourinho used him there primarily “to help him recover his confidence” and considers him best operating from the flank.

“He can attack defenders more in an individual way,” he said of using the Belgian on the left. “When he gets the ball it’s more about him attacking the right-back and the right-back is always in trouble against a player who has his best quality in a one-against-one. When he plays at No10 he gets into areas where sometimes he is surrounded by teams who play zonal with two or three players in the same zone. Many times he receives the ball with his back to the opponents and players can be very aggressive, pressing him from behind. But he can do both.”

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