Elegant Ruben has turned back clock to be Tuchel’s man
RUBEN LOFTUSCHEEK seems very much to be making up for lost time.
FIrst there were the
14 days of international break that must have passed incredibly slowly before he finally found out that he had indeed been picked to start back-to-back league games for Chelsea.
It’s the first time that has happened since April 2019.
Wind back a further year and he featured in four of England’s seven games at the World Cup finals in Russia.
Yet ask fans to name the 23 players who made up that 2018 squad and far too often the Chelsea midfielder is literally the forgotten man.
Square-framed and
6ft 4in, he seems an odd figure to forget.
He was certainly always very much in Gareth Southgate’s mind when he pictured an elegant yet athletic vision of how he wanted to build his England team.
Trouble is, he is now
25 so perhaps he could be forgiven for instantly clattering that giant frame into Frank “The Tank” Onyeka by means of a calling card.
That said, it is the subtlety of Loftus-Cheek’s game that has caught the eye of Thomas Tuchel in recent weeks.
First in cameo appearances against Manchester City and Juventus, and then in these latest starts.
His calmness in transition meant in the first half Romelu Lukaku was having an effort ruled out for offside just 11 seconds after Bryan Mbeumo hit the post. Rather than whacking the ball away, Loftus-Cheek had constructed a slick counter-attack.
In the second half he ghosted past three Brentford midfielders as though they weren’t there.
In a separate incident he single-handedly held up a concerted effort by two Brentford opponents to give N’Golo Kante time to pick their pockets and launch another Chelsea attack.
All the while Saul Niguez – the man whose summer signing was said to have bookmarked the end of Loftus-Cheek’s Chelsea career – was sat on the bench.
Even when Mason Mount – three years younger and now a quantum leap ahead of Loftus-Cheek for club and country – came on, Mateo Kovacic not Loftus-Cheek discovered his number was up.
Brentford’s brave refusal to lie down had turned this into a battle and a midfielder with an Anthony Joshua physique should be just the thing.
The problem, though, is that the lack of action has left the prizefighter leggy towards the end of games – out for the count, almost.
He was increasingly peripheral the harder Brentford pressed.
Neat shuffling footwork, yes, but no longer any aggression as the clock ticked on.
It was left to Edouard Mendy to do the meaningful glove work.
Meanwhile, a finale set up for Loftus-Cheek to be the hero instead saw the midfield enforcer hanging on for the bell.