Is Ryan Bertrand In The Champions League Squad?

by Graham MacAree on Feb 19, 2012 5:59 PM GMT in Chelsea FC: UEFA Champions League

Chelsea rather notoriously neglected to include both Ryan Bertrand and Romelu Lukaku on their Champions League squad to start the season, and that's led to some confusion as to who exactly will be available to Andre Villas-Boas against Napoli. With Ashley Cole possibly missing out thanks to a calf injury, it'd be nice if the manager had a choice beyond Jose Bosingwa at left back (if only to give us something to complain about).

Turns out he probably does. Like the Premier League's 25-man squad, we got to do things over again in January, and the departures of Alex and Nicolas Anelka have given Chelsea some wiggle room. From the UEFA website, it looks as though both Ryan Bertrand and Gary Cahill have been added to the squad, with Lukaku still not making it in. There's no official squad list anywhere - the one on UEFA.com still lists Alex, Anelka, Josh McEachran and Kaby, but it certainly didn't have Bertrand on the roster beforehand (and still omits Lukaku) so I think we can be fairly confident that he's in. Yay!

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Yey!

Bosingwa still starts.

by DPeezy on Feb 19, 2012 6:14 PM GMT reply actions

I agree

I think AVB will go with Bosingwa instead of Bertrand. As someone on here said the other day, wouldn’t it be nice to still have Zhirkov?

by dodgerboy03 on Feb 19, 2012 9:50 PM GMT up reply actions

Oh no

Zhirkov in defense? LOLZ.

by DPeezy on Feb 19, 2012 10:23 PM GMT up reply actions

So I'm guessing you prefer him to Bosingwa?

Yes, Bosingwa has been very shit at RB, but he’s impressed at LB, including against Man Utd with Valencia running red hot. This would be a big game for such a young player (meaning Bertrand)

by FootieFromAfar on Feb 19, 2012 6:20 PM GMT via mobile reply actions

Not necessarily

I simply favour having options.

by Graham MacAree on Feb 19, 2012 6:23 PM GMT up reply actions

Fair enough

Options are always good

by FootieFromAfar on Feb 19, 2012 6:46 PM GMT via mobile up reply actions

How many times has Bossy actually played left back?

Twice that I can think of. Not sure we can extrapolate that he’s a good LB (he’s had more than 2 decent games at RB, but it would be wrong to assume he’s good at that). My view is still that Bosingwa is a bit rubbish and I’d rather not have him on the pitch if we can possibly avoid it. And it seems that now we can.

by deg0ey on Feb 19, 2012 6:53 PM GMT up reply actions

Four times that I can recall

Twice this season (Leverkusen – “ok”; United – “excellent”).
Twice under Hiddink (West Ham (iirc) – “ok”; Barcelona – “excellent++”).

by DPeezy on Feb 19, 2012 6:55 PM GMT up reply actions

Fair - I only remembered the two from this season

Not sure how I managed to forget the Barca one, though. Still think he’s a bigger risk than Bertrand at this point.

by deg0ey on Feb 19, 2012 6:57 PM GMT up reply actions

Hmm

It would seem based on the reviews of each time above, that maybe he rises to the occasion when it is big competition? I mean, I hate to give United that kind of credit, but he had what was expected to be a really tough situation to defend, with Valencia… and that was pretty well-muted. I hope that if we have to use him, that he replicates his efforts against the big boys. And “ok” for him is actually probably better than most of his RB performances as of late, so maybe our luck is that he’d be really good there anytime he needs to be used.

Trying to find the silver linings :)

by alynne4307 on Feb 19, 2012 7:11 PM GMT up reply actions