Chelsea have dropped a big hint regarding when we could see Reece James back in action.
James has been out of action for some time now, but is seemingly closing in on a return.
As per The Athletic, Reece James has travelled to the FIFA Club World Cup after being named in the club’s squad.
The Blues’ first clash of the Club World Cup sees them play on Wednesday the 9th of February with a final then expected a few days later on Saturday the 12th.
So, with Chelsea only set to play two games at the CWC and the last being on the 12th at the latest, it appears that James is expected to be back fit by the 12th, otherwise he surely would have been left at home?
What Thomas Tuchel said about Reece James
However, James’ inclusion in Chelsea’s CWC squad does come after some contradictory comments from Tuchel regarding James.
Speaking ahead of Chelsea’s FA Cup tie on Saturday, Tuchel claimed that James would not travel with the club for their upcoming mini-tournament:
“Reece is not in team training yet, so he’s not available this weekend. And he will not travel with us to Abu Dhabi because he’s not back in team training.
“I’m too long a manager to have big feelings for injuries, and not to get overexcited by pure dates that are maybe out there when a player can come back.
“I know you can have setbacks and it can take a long time sometimes, it depends, and the injury was a big injury and I felt it straight away.
“The diagnosis was straight away that it’s a big injury, and from there we need to be patient. It’s a hamstring, it’s always tricky and he’s a very physical player.
“And unfortunately he then caught the flu and that was a setback in the last few days of his process in coming back to the team.
“But we are patient. We would love to have him back tomorrow of course, but it’s not happening and we have to be patient.”
It will be interesting to see what happens with James in the coming week.
