'I expected more' - Chelsea boss Enzo Maresca aims blunt dig at captain Reece James in stark admission over lack of 'proper leader'

The England international was made club captain under former manager Mauricio Pochettino in 2023, but over the past season and a bit he has been restricted to just 12 appearances in all competitions due to hamstring injuries - and received two red cards in that time. Now that he is back fit, the Chelsea head coach has publicly challenged skipper James to do more for the team, on and off the pitch.

He said, via The Telegraph: “I spoke with him and I expected from him more in terms of leadership, inside the changing room and for different kinds of things. He is on the way, he is doing well, he is progressing, but from Reece I expected more also in terms of leadership. Most of the time when they are captain, they think that because they are captain they have more. ‘Because I am the captain, I expect that you give me more.’ For me, because you are the captain you have to give more. You have to give more than the rest. And sometimes: ‘OK, I am the captain, I can give less.’ No. He is one of the captains and I expected from him, and his team-mates expected from him, to give always more in terms of leadership in general.”

In another damning indictment of the state of affairs at Chelsea, Maresca believes his squad is not well-stocked with leaders. The former Leicester City boss does believe the likes of Tosin Adarabioyo, Levi Colwill and Marc Cucurella are not far off in that department, though.

He added: “He [James] understands that we expected more from him. He’s one of our guys from the academy but this is one of the reasons why he has to show more in terms of personality. When you don’t have a proper leader, you need to build that. I think we don’t have a proper leader. Probably Tosin is one of the guys that is. So the rest, we need to build them. Reece is on the way but he is not there, so he needs to make an effort in that one. The one that is doing fantastic in this kind of thing is Levi. Levi probably at the beginning of the season was not a leader but now you can see that he is one of the guys that is always speaking. We need to build that. Marc Cucurella is one of the guys. We need more and more.”

James made his first appearance of the season in Chelsea's 2-1 loss at Liverpool last weekend and to manage his fitness, the 24-year-old will only play one game a week to ease him back in. Next up, the Blues host Newcastle on Sunday at Stamford Bridge in what should be a tight Premier League clash.