Another international break has been navigated and the Premier League returns with some lovely debuts, including one which may make Erik ten Hag look silly.
Eddie Nketiah
Not since the January transfer deadline dashes of Tony Pulis and Sam Allardyce have Crystal Palace supporters had to familiarise themselves with so many new signings all at once.
It could be suggested that the calibre of player has improved and the club is able to peruse a different market as a more established Premier League shopper. Under Pulis in 2014 it was Scott Dann, Wayne Hennessey, Joe Ledley, Jason Puncheon and Tom Ince shuffling through the door. Three years later with the chequebook in Allardyce’s hands the late arrivals were Patrick van Aanholt, Luka Milivojevic and Mamadou Sakho.
Nketiah cost more than all eight players combined. Maxence Lacroix, Trevoh Chalobah and, bless him, Matt Turner represent varying degrees of seemingly excellent business overall but the £30m capture of an Arsenal benchwarmer is most intriguing.
“I’m really excited for my Selhurst debut and hopefully I can make it one to remember,” Nketiah said this week. Jean-Philippe Mateta might have something to say about that but Nketiah did score a hat-trick three Premier League starts ago, which sounds impressive until you realise it was last October.
Federico Chiesa
Another who won’t start, Chiesa will be under no illusions otherwise as Liverpool prepare to host Nottingham Forest. The forward has not featured in any competitive capacity since Italy crashed out of the European Championship, and it seems particularly unlikely that Arne Slot will be longing to disrupt a fully operative attack.
Liverpool thrashed Manchester United before the international break and that wave of momentum will only have been paused rather than halted altogether. Mo Salah (Egypt), Luis Diaz (Colombia) and Cody Gakpo (Netherlands) all scored on duty for their countries, while Diogo Jota fulfilled the role of every Portugal player over the past two decades, that of perennial subservient foil to Cristiano Ronaldo, impeccably.
Darwin Nunez did not feature for Uruguay, but he remains Darwin Nunez at his very core.
Chiesa will thus have to work tirelessly for his opportunities but almost a fortnight of diligent and focused training away from the spotlight should have brought him up to enough speed for a substitute cameo, probably coming on for an annoyed Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Manuel Ugarte
“He didn’t play so far in the season, not one match minute, and so he needs to build his fitness state and then we have to build him in the team. And then I am sure he will contribute to our level and he will be an important player, but that will take a couple of weeks, maybe even months.”
Six days later, Ugarte played 79 minutes of a World Cup qualifier against Paraguay. Four days after that came a trip to Venezuela, in which he played a full hour and a half and picked up the sort of booking to which Manchester United fans should become accustomed.
There is obviously more nuance involved – Ugarte has to be integrated in various different ways by his new club in a manner a 23-cap international does not when it comes to his country – but one of Erik ten Hag’s convenient excuses not to fast-track a necessary revamp of his midfield was removed over the international break.
Ugarte has the “match minutes” and “fitness state” to be thrown straight in. And while he only returned from Uruguay camp on Thursday afternoon and needs time to understand the tactical approach of a team which either specifically bypasses the midfield or places so much undue pressure on it it collapses in on itself, he cannot possibly be a worse option than Casemiro. At this point Davy Klaassen looks like an upgrade.
Raheem Sterling
Nicolas Anelka might contest the point on a technicality but Sterling will soon became the first player to feature for four of the Premier League’s Big Six. In this, the week of #Barclaysmen, it is a remarkable feat.
If it is to be achieved against Spurs then the omens are positive. Sterling has eight goals and five assists in 24 games meetings with them; only against Bournemouth (16) and West Ham (15) has he provided more career goal contributions against a single opponent.
And Arsenal really might need him. Mikel Arteta has options when it comes to replacing Declan Rice and Martin Odegaard but a version of Sterling fit from an intensive pre-season, fresh after sitting out the campaign’s first few weeks and motivated to prove Chelsea wrong would be a powerful weapon to unleash on a vulnerable Spurs side.
Jadon Sancho
The other side of that coin is Sancho, who “has been exactly what I expected” and a player Enzo Maresca is “sure he’s going to help us”.
Chelsea have resisted any reflexive temptation to exile their new signing to the reserves, affording Sancho the opportunity to train with the non-international seniors under a coach who probably doesn’t spend entire training sessions muttering derogatory phrases about him under his breath.
Quite where he or indeed any of those players actually fit into a coherent Chelsea system is something of a mystery but that is for nerds to figure out.
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