Reece James stepped into central midfield this evening in a much altered Chelsea team, and Thomas Tuchel was asked about it in the presser after the game.
He insisted that this was just a temporary solution. As he pointed out, usually he would have N’Golo Kante, Jorginho, Mateo Kovacic and Ruben Loftus-Cheek available to pick ahead of James to play in the middle of the park.
This solution worked (to some extent) as a one-off, but ultimately, “the target is to put him back on the wing.”
You can see the full press conference embedded here, with this answer coming after 2 minutes:
