Marc Cucurella has plenty of critics in the Chelsea fanbase, but fans are universally appreciating his efforts right now.
He returned from ankle surgery and was thrown right back into the action before he was 100% ready.
Since then, he’s had to play on a punishing schedule, including going on international duty with Spain and adding further unexpected minutes to a recovery schedule which must have crossed more than a couple of red lines from a sport science perspective.
With Ben Chilwell still a double, Cucurella will start his fourth game in ten days today. For his sake, we hope it’s the last for a while – he’s earned a break!
Putting your body on the line and stepping up for the team when they need you will always endear fans to you, no matter of what they think of you on the pitch. It was interesting to read Cucurella’s comments on the Chelsea official website where he discussed his return from a pretty serious surgery:
“It’s not been an easy season because I was injured for a long period. I had to do my best, work hard every day, and now I’ve had the possibility to play. I feel very good and we need to continue in this way and win the games, that is most important,” he explained.
“We need to be more stable. We need to win every week and we have an important game at Sheffield United that we must win. Otherwise, the three points [against Manchester United] were for nothing. So we need to keep building. A lot of games we have played better than the result shows, but this is football. We need to reduce these small mistakes to become a better team. We are young but we fight until the end and believe in our quality.”
Today Chelsea face relatively soft opposition in Sheffield United. But that’s precisely why Cucurella needs to be at 100% concentration. He can be a big weapon in attack as we saw in midweek, but we can’t afford another poor defensive display. We need him to be smart in his decision making and the whole team to manage the game better than they have been doing in the last couple of months.
We just need one more quality display from the former Brighton man – and no mistakes from anyone.
