{"id":773543,"date":"2026-09-17T11:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/773543\/"},"modified":"2026-09-17T11:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-17T11:04:10","slug":"has-romeo-lavia-finally-arrived-at-chelsea-after-injury-setbacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/773543\/","title":{"rendered":"Has Romeo Lavia finally arrived at Chelsea after injury setbacks?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With Reece James and Wesley Fofana having come through similar injury setbacks, Lavia is keen to become the latest <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelsea<\/a> player to rewrite his story.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He has become a regular in Alonso&#8217;s midfield alongside captain James, who began his career as a right-back.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lavia&#8217;s importance has only increased, with Moises Caicedo limited to 14 minutes this season and Enzo Fernandez having left for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-city\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manchester City<\/a> in a \u00a3125m transfer on deadline day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He added: &#8220;It&#8217;s part of my game as well to take responsibility and have some character. I really like being in that position and also being at this club. Having this responsibility, it&#8217;s not even pressure, it&#8217;s just like privilege, so I&#8217;m actually living the dream.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;This is why you&#8217;ve been playing and training all these years for, so just go and enjoy it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He speaks of having the &#8220;love&#8221; of his team-mates, while <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelsea<\/a> have publicly and privately backed Lavia to become a key player despite an injury-hit couple of seasons.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">There is now hope that <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelsea<\/a> can become a force again after a tweaked transfer strategy that has added more experienced players, alongside the arrival of \u00a3117m club record signing Morgan Rogers from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/aston-villa\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Aston Villa<\/a>, who featured with Lavia in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/manchester-city\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manchester City<\/a>&#8216;s academy.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Alongside Cole Palmer and Joao Pedro, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelsea<\/a> have scored 18 goals in all competitions across six matches, something that has thrilled Blues fans and neutrals alike.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s honestly amazing,&#8221; Lavia said. &#8220;Obviously I knew Morgan, but just the way he&#8217;s come in and then they&#8217;ve all clicked together up front. Sometimes I wish I could go in the stands and enjoy watching it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It makes your job easier, because it&#8217;s like &#8216;you guys go and work your magic and then we do the rest&#8217;. So we&#8217;re really, really happy to have them all and hopefully we can achieve great things together.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Yet Lavia is not getting carried away and says the team have been &#8220;too immature&#8221; in the past and need to be &#8220;realistic&#8221; about &#8220;becoming the team that we and everyone thinks we can be&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">For him, it is about ticking off milestones and enjoying the journey, both collectively and individually, after scoring his first <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelsea<\/a> goal in a 4-3 win against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/brighton-and-hove-albion\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Brighton<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It was just a moment where I felt free,&#8221; he explained. &#8220;It feels like all the work that you&#8217;re putting in, you gain the reward of it, so it was a very emotional moment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I wanted to change the narrative. My first Premier League goal was against <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/football\/teams\/chelsea\" class=\"ssrcss-1fqyhkk-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Chelsea<\/a> [for Southampton in 2022], so I always felt like it was a bit strange.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I saw all my team-mates score, so I was waiting for it to be my turn and when it happened I was very, very happy and excited. I wanted to express it as much as possible with the fans and I really loved it.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With Reece James and Wesley Fofana having come through similar injury setbacks, Lavia is keen to become the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":773544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-773543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=773543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/773543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/773544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=773543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=773543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=773543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}