Reece James has endured repeated fitness problems that have denied him long runs of uninterrupted football. Since the 2021\u201322 season the Chelsea captain has missed 118 matches across four campaigns with a variety of issues, and his hamstring has been the most recent concern.<\/p>\n
James followed a strong display in Chelsea\u2019s 2\u20131 victory over Liverpool with plans to join the national team for fixtures against Wales and Latvia. Under former Blues boss Thomas Tuchel, the right-back had been seen as a candidate to establish himself in the Three Lions setup. That expectation has been delayed after James was withdrawn from Tuchel\u2019s latest squad following a fresh setback.<\/p>\n
The 25-year-old had enjoyed an injury-free start to 2025\u201326 before the problem emerged during Saturday\u2019s victory over the champions. Because of his history of availability issues, manager Enzo Maresca has not hesitated to rest his captain when necessary, deploying Malo Gusto at right back in James\u2019s absence.<\/p>\n
At present the precise nature of the new problem has not been confirmed. It is believed to be minor, and some reports suggest the decision to withdraw him from international duty was precautionary. James also published a photograph on Instagram showing an open wound on his shin after the Liverpool match, and it is conceivable that impact to the shin contributed to the withdrawal.<\/p>\n
That combination of factors leaves room for optimism. There is a possibility the right back will not miss any club matches, depending on how the wound and any hamstring irritation respond to treatment and rest. Chelsea face Nottingham Forest away on Oct. 18, and the club have four further fixtures scheduled before the end of the month. The coming days will determine whether James returns straight to the squad or yields more minutes to Gusto while he completes his recovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reece James faces a short setback after Liverpool clash; Chelsea monitor recovery ahead of Forest.18<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3637,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1006,1100],"class_list":["post-3638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-captaincy","tag-defence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3638"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3638\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}