Reece James embracing Chelsea midfield brief in what could be ideal new role | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca insists plan has always been to move his captain into the middle, with the early results promising

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At Villa Park, with his forward line so depleted, Maresca tried to compensate by strengthening in midfield, starting James alongside both Caicedo and Fernandez in a rarely-seen three. Here in the Danish capital, James playing 90 minutes allowed the overworked pair to do only half that each in what appeared a scripted change of shift.

Afterwards, though, Maresca insisted that James’s new role is also part of some broader plan, one hatched when he took the job last summer.

“You can ask Reece,” Maresca explained. “When I signed with Chelsea, probably the day after, I sent him a video about seeing him as a midfielder.

“I see Reece as a midfielder, not [just] now, but since day one, before I met him for the first time, when he was on holiday.”

Maresca recalled watching clips of that now folkloric run in midfield at Wigan, citing James’s long-range effort against Bristol City in April 2019 as the source of his inspiration.

Quite how James reacted to receiving unsolicited tactical advice from what, presumably, was an unknown number while trying to escape the game on a sun lounger last summer is not clear, but certainly he appears to be embracing the brief now.

There were moments at Villa when he took too long on the ball and was caught out, but you always felt they were as much down to ring rust as the move into the heart of the pitch.

Here, he looked assured, impressively starting on the left of a double pivot before shifting closer to his familiar right once Fernandez replaced Caicedo at half-time. While an alien viewer could have guessed that Trevoh Chalobah was not in his ideal habitat at right-back, nor Dewsbury-Hall attacking off the left, James looked a midfield native.

Lavia has been back in training this week and so this experiment may not need to last, but if Maresca’s insistence that it will is to be taken at face value then it is fair to question why so many recent Chelsea managers, many of whom have been more desperate in their search for winning formulas, have not given it a whirl.

It is fair to question why so many recent Chelsea managers have not given James in midfield a try

Perhaps it has simply felt too big a risk on too little evidence; 13 games in midfield in the Championship was never much to go on, and even less so as they have become a more distant memory. Perhaps the evolution of the full-back role has made it unnecessary, with Gareth Southgate’s use of Trent Alexander-Arnold, forever James’s point of comparison, a cautionary tale.

Perhaps, under Thomas Tuchel in particular, James was simply too good at doing what he did best. Perhaps the priority has simply been getting him on the pitch, anywhere. “The main target for us is to help him be fit all season,” Maresca cautioned here.

You wonder, though, whether there might even something in the physical demands of midfield more suited to James’s disposition, given his hamstring issues. Still now, even with box-to-box players a rare breed, it is central midfielders that cover the most distance in matches, but conventional, overlapping full-backs who tend to make the most explosive sprints.

Maresca, in any case, does not often use his defenders in that style, adapting the remit of Malo Gusto and Marc Cucurella on the merits of each game. With James, his creativity appears set too stretch even further.

“When you watch a player, you sometimes need to use imagination,” the Italian said. “I always imagined him also behaving as a midfielder.”

So, for a good while, have many Chelsea fans. Now, at last, they are seeing it first-hand.