Chelsea took their first training session during the mini-tour of the United States at the University of St Louis ahead of Thursday’s match against Manchester City yesterday.
Members of the university team watched the Blues train as Rafael Benitez organised the Blues into a nine-a-side training match designed to perfect ball retention before playing a more competitive game.
Youngsters Andreas Christensen, Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Nathan Ake are part of the 23-man squad and hopefully being on tour with the senior players is beneficial for them, I want to see them get a decent amount of minutes on the pitch over the two games as they’re going to get more out of it than anyone else.
The session is Chelsea’s penultimate one before today’s one at the Busch Stadium, where we will play against City on Thursday, and two Blues will address the media in the pre-match presser.
It’s fairly apparent that the motivation behind the post-season tour has more to do with money than it has to do with football as the club attempts to recoup the funds lost by the early exit from the Champions League. I just hope for two entertaining fixtures in which none of our players are injured and there’s plenty of goals.