Chelsea v Crystal Palace - Premier League
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Much of the pre-match focus ahead of the season opener against Crystal Palace yesterday focused on the defense, with four first-team center backs out with injury and Chelsea reduced to just one senior player at the position in Trevoh Chalobah.
Head coach Enzo Maresca has made it pretty clear that he would prefer reinforcements to be brought in from the transfer market. But even if the club were willing to do that (and we’re apparently not), it would’ve been hard to add any new signing so quickly considering that up until Friday, it looked like Tosin Adarabioyo would deputize for Levi Colwill in the central role of the backline.
But Tosin himself picked up an injury, ruling him out for (at least) this weekend, which left Maresca with two choices: either give Josh Acheampong the start, or come up with something creative involving the full backs. Thankfully, he chose option one.
Acheampong thus got his third league start (and sixth appearance), becoming the second youngest player (19 years and 104 days of age) to start on opening day for Chelsea in the Premier League after Glen Johnson in 2003-04. That’s a bit specific, but still impressive.
And speaking of impressive, after a bit of shakiness early on — including a poor pass that led to the free kick from which Eberechi Eze scored the disallowed goal — the youngster hardly put a foot wrong and was able to match up very well against the bigger, stronger, and much more experienced Jean-Philippe Mateta. Acheampong even got the striker booked for a late lunge, part of a rousing sequence where he showed off his quickness and tackling ability to deal with two Palace players at the same time and prevent any danger on our goal.
Maresca was duly impressed as well.
“Josh was very good. We already show confidence on Josh last season, when we gave to him some games. Today was good against a very good striker like Mateta. So we continue to trust Josh.”
Colwill’s out long-term and the prognosis on Tosin is still unclear (not a promising sign either!), while Wesley Fofana and Benoît Badiashile are still not fit, so Acheampong should have more chances to earn that trust, and perhaps not just in emergencies.