Romeo Lavia won’t be in the Chelsea starting line-up when they take on Luton Town tomorrow night in the Premier League.
That has been confirmed by Mauricio Pochettino on Thursday afternoon.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Pochettino announced that Romeo Lavia is still working back to full fitness and isn’t ready to join his teammates quite yet.
The £58million (Sky Sports) signing joined the Blues from Southampton earlier this month, but his club debut will have to wait a little while longer still.
Pochettino has shared that Lavia, 19, won’t be involved against Luton at Stamford Bridge.
However, 21-year-old Moises Caicedo is available to make his first start for the club since arriving from Brighton.
“Moises is ready to start. Lavia… no. He needs a few weeks to be ready to be involved with the team. His condition, he is working now to catch the team. For Romeo, we need to wait a few weeks. Moises is ready,” Pochettino said, as quoted by Chelsea’s official YouTube channel.
Lavia joins an exciting crop of talented midfielders on Chelsea’s books right now, but he’s got to get up to full match sharpness first.
Journalist Simon Phillips reported on his Substack earlier this week that Lavia has been doing individual training work at Cobham to step up his fitness.
With the September international break just around the corner, we’re guessing a realistic timeframe for him to make his debut could be 17 September against Bournemouth. Just to stress that is purely speculative, though.
The energetic defensive midfielder is certainly going to be worth the wait once he finally plays.
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