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Those chains that were holding Reece James back for the last five months must have been made of sturdy stuff, because when the shackles were loosened, an unrelenting beast was unleashed on a bewildered Nottingham Forest to leave Chelsea supporters wondering what might have been this season, had their captain fantastic stayed fit.
His timeline on Saturday was simply extraordinary. Less than a minute after coming on, on his first appearance of the calendar year following hamstring surgery, James played a part in Raheem Sterling’s 80th minute equaliser – the start of a quickfire Chelsea turnaround in the Nottingham sunshine.
119 seconds later and he was supplying the winner that even Nicolas Jackson couldn’t miss, guiding Chelsea to a victory that gives them a golden chance to secure an unlikely Europa League spot for next season, out of nowhere.
“Are you not entertained?” James asked his captivated X/Twitter audience after the match. The desperate yeses could be heard from the City Ground to Cobham. Chelsea’s beacon of hope is beaming brightly again, just in time for someone else, England at the upcoming Euros, to reap the rewards.
Other than Cole Palmer, Chelsea were distinctly ordinary on Saturday evening. Forest hit the woodwork three times in the second half before Callum Hudson-Odoi appeared to have curled the winner 16 minutes from time – a fitting way for the Blues’ recent upturn in fortunes to hit the buffers, a former player let go for peanuts coming back to haunt them.
Enter juxtaposed James. A player of the academy graduate’s dynamism is priceless, turning Chelsea from billion-pound bottle jobs into a team on the road back to their former grandeur. It would seem somewhat foolish to grant James the Player of the Match award that went to Palmer, again. But the 10 minute cameo still got him the silver medal.
The cross for Jackson’s winner was from a different realm to what the other Chelsea players were operating in. Someone that rusty, that out of practice, shouldn’t be able to plant the ball onto his team-mate’s head, having drifted the cross close enough to the goalkeeper to lure him off his line, but still too far for him to claim. But he did, an assist worthy of winning any game.
“Massive,” was Mauricio Pochettino’s response when asked what it feels like to have his captain back. “It’s unlucky there are only two games ahead and it’s one week left. It is important for him to recover for his feelings and he is such an important player for us. He is our captain. We all love him.
“Yes, important, and to see whether he will be fit and have a chance of making the Euros.”
Quite how this Chelsea team have got themselves in with a shout of a top six finish in this most omnishambles of a season is quite something. With James back in the picture, that final push for sixth is firmly coming into focus.
Gareth Southgate will now surely be another hastily considering ripping up his game plan to accommodate James too. We are hardly short of right-backs on these shores, but James in full flight is one of the few players in that position who can even hold a candle to Kyle Walker.
Two more performances like his City Ground heroics without any medical repercussions and the previously untouchable Walker will be looking over his shoulder as he boards that plane for Germany, knowing any false move and his spot could be swept from him by a resurgent star even many Chelsea fans had forgotten about.
This is an extract of The Score. Sign up here to receive the newsletter every Monday morning this season for Daniel Storey’s verdict on all 20 Premier League clubs
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