The non-playing captain is usually a role reserved for late-career stalwarts and the Ryder Cup. But for Reece James, too, it is becoming what must be a frustratingly familiar brief, at least from the start of Premier League games.
Chelsea’s skipper has made the XI for only one of his side’s last five league games and not played more 45 minutes in any of them, having been taken off at half-time on that sole occasion at Fulham.
James is a victim on two fronts: of his own fitness record, which Enzo Maresca insists still needs careful management even five months after his last significant injury; and of the Italian’s desire to squeeze Romeo Lavia, Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo into the same first-choice team, the latter having started the last three games at right-back.
Combined, they have left James relying on outings in the Conference League, where he is odds-on to lift his first trophy as Chelsea captain before the month is out. Having missed so much football over the past few years, perhaps he just is relieved to be playing at all.
Presuming - dangerous game that it is - that James stays fit, however, he will surely expect a more prominent role come the start of next season and Maresca - presuming he is still in charge - will have a decision to make over how he structures his best side.
For many Chelsea fans, the present grievance is this: that they have a right-back and a holding midfielder who are each among the top five in their position in the Premier League, yet one is playing elsewhere and the other cannot get in the team.
Maresca, though, clearly likes the control and stability afforded by Caicedo’s inversions into midfield, and is on record as being less a fan of conventional, overlapping full-backs like James.
It is partly why he has experimented so much recently with James in midfield, though you suspect only partly. Having loaned several midfielders out in January, using James there has been just about the only route to earning Caicedo and/or Fernandez a rest in the Conference League.
Even if Maresca truly believes James could make a decent central midfielder long-term, it is hard to make the case he will be usurping any of Lavia, Caicedo and Fernandez any time soon. Frankly, you’d hope not, given they are specialists who cost a quarter-of-a-billion pounds to buy.
Caicedo has started at right-back six times in the league this season and would surely have done more often had Lavia been fit. Sunday’s loss at Newcastle was Chelsea’s first defeat in that run, coming with 10 men, after four wins and a draw.
The sample, though, is both small and hard to interpret. Against Tottenham late last year, for instance, Chelsea actually trailed 2-1 at half-time with Caicedo at right-back, before going on to win 4-3 after he was pushed into midfield. The second half at Newcastle, with James brought on at the interval to play full-back, showed a similar upturn in performance, if not the same turnaround in score.
Nicolas Jackson’s brainless red card, grouped with Jadon Sancho’s ineligibility to face parent club Manchester United and the five-day gap between games, could provide chance for James to return to the XI when Manchester United come to Stamford Bridge on Friday night. With such a shortage in attack, Maresca may opt to shuffle every player higher up the pitch and restore James at right-back.
The second half at St James’s Park was the first time he, Caicedo, Lavia and Fernandez have ever shared a pitch at the same time for Chelsea. Perhaps now they could do so from the off.
