Enzo Maresca, Manager of Chelsea, suggested that the Talisman midfielder of the Club Cole Palmer could be moved forward after two strikers were injured this week.
Nicolas Jackson suffered an axis problem on Monday evening in the 2-1 win of Chelsea against West Ham United, while Marc Guiu – the teenager who replaced him during this game – also damaged his adductor.
Guiu is expected to need “weeks or months” to recover while Jackson could be again in a few days. However, Chelsea is two times a week in front of Brighton and forces Maresca to possibly become creative with his selection decisions.
The obvious replacement for the injured duo is Christopher Nkunku. As Maresca recognized: “Christo has already played as NO9.”
The Italian rarely trusted Nkunku to start the opposition of the Premier League, and even during his productive excursions in the Europa Conference League, the former striker of RB Leipzig was regularly used in a lower role.
Maresca joked that he may be needed to run the line Nico [Jackson] And from there we will see various options. “
Palmer was used almost exclusively as a NO10 in a 4-2-3-1 system this season.
The productive midfielder has some experience in a center forward role that was sporadically forced to the front during Mauricio Pochettino’s debut campaign in Chelsea and – more wittly – when he played for City’s youth team, which was trained by Maresca.
Chelsea’s lack of natural strikers comes shortly after a transfer window where Joao Felix AC Milan has loaned. The only winter clue of the blues was the teenage middle field player Mathis Amougou.
Maresca can insist that he “has no regret” about the recent recruitment of his club, but has already searched for July. “In summer we will see if we need something else, not just in terms of strikers, but in general,” added the Italian. “It is bad luck that two strikers both have an injury in the same game.”