Enzo Maresca has revealed that Liam Delap is close to returning to Chelsea training, a development that could ease the club\u2019s recent struggles to find goals from central positions.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiam is very close, he is not working with us yet, he is still out, but hopefully he can start in the next days [to] take part in the session with us,\u201d Maresca told a press conference ahead of Wednesday\u2019s Champions League meeting with Ajax.<\/p>\n
Delap\u2019s presence was noted for the link-up play he produced early in the season, which coincided with Jo\u00e3o Pedro\u2019s productive spell. The two players appeared to have developed an understanding before Delap\u2019s injury, and Pedro has since been asked to occupy more advanced forward roles while the striker has been absent. Delap has yet to score his first Premier League goal for the club.<\/p>\n
The club\u2019s response to Delap\u2019s absence included terminating the loan of young striker Marc Guiu from Sunderland, a decision that drew scrutiny when Guiu did not feature immediately on his return. Guiu did come off the bench in the two most recent matches, playing 16 minutes against Liverpool and 45 minutes versus Nottingham Forest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Athletic note he held crunch talks with Maresca in search of an explanation for his lack of minutes, and the Italian assured Guiu his chance would come.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maesca also outlined the options available beyond Delap, mentioning the academy forward and another attacking prospect.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have him, we have also Tyrique [George],\u201d Maresca said. \u201cHe played as a No. 9 in the past, he did well.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trust Marc, we trust him already last year, he was always playing in the Conference [League], we also gave him some Premier League games, so we are sure in the past that we trust Marc, now he is again with us and he is going to play the games for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n
Delap\u2019s return to full training, if confirmed, would arrive ahead of the Champions League fixture with Ajax and provide Maresca with added options in central attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Enzo Maresca says Liam Delap is close to resuming training, offering Chelsea an attacking option…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3964,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1125],"tags":[1047,1174,1175],"class_list":["post-3965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-strikers","tag-champions-league","tag-marc-guiu","tag-striker-fitness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965","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=3965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3965\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}