Cesar Azpilicueta backs Ross Barkley to become 'very important' for Chelsea

Alex Young @alexwsyoung26 January 2018

Cesar Azpilicueta has backed Ross Barkley to become "very important" for Chelsea after struggling to impress in his debut against Arsenal on Wednesday.

Antonio Conte called the January signing with just half an hour on the clock, after Willian was forced to withdraw, and Barkley showed visible match rustiness having not played a competitive game since May 2017.

Azpilicueta called for patience over Barkley, insisting the 24-year-old must be given time to get back up the speed and spoke of how impressive he has been during training.

"We know that he is coming back from a long injury and he has only played for the under-23s but he came straight on without a warm-up and seems on the right path," Azpilicueta said.

"He is coming from a seven-month injury and is with a new club and a new team. What I see in training is him working very hard to work with the team and I am sure he will be very important.

"Now in the next six or eight games we have the next rounds of the FA Cup, we have the Champions League and we have the Premier League.

"We have to keep pushing and we need everybody 120 percent.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in