Chelsea coach Enzo Maresca has confirmed that Filip Jorgensen is now the club’s first-choice goalkeeper ahead of the Premier League clash against Brighton on Friday.
Jorgensen, who joined the club from Villarreal in the summer, has spent his time at Stamford Bridge as a deputy to Robert Sanchez since the beginning of the season.
However, Sanchez has been below par in previous games, committing a division-high five errors leading to goals in the Premier League.
Most recently, he produced a poor performance in the 3-1 defeat to Manchester City, after which he lost his place to Jorgensen in the next match against West Ham.
Maresca handed him a shock recall in the 2-1 defeat to Brighton in the FA Cup, but he has now revealed that Jorgensen will keep his first-team shirt for now.
He said, “The Filip solution was also to give some time to Robert to recover mentally, physically in general but the idea is not game-by-game to change the keeper. At this moment, the last Premier League game we won against West Ham was Filip. Unfortunately, the FA Cup game was Robert but our keeper at this moment is Filip.
“I spoke with Robert a few days before West Ham when I made the decision to play with Filip and I never spoke again with Robert. With Filip exactly the same. So they know the situation. This is the situation now but then we’ll see. This situation at the moment is like this.”
Maresca also confirmed that Nicolas Jackson is expected to be ruled out of action until April with a hamstring injury.
He said, “Nico will be out until the international break, and probably be available after. Marc Guiu will also be out for a while.
“We knew that it was a muscle problem, but we didn’t know how important [bad] it was because his feeling, his reaction, was quite good.
“We all thought that was not a big injury but unfortunately he had a scan a few days ago; it is an important one and it will be around six to eight weeks.”
The Italian manager also used the opportunity to defend Jackson, who has been criticised for his poor form in the last few weeks.
He said, “Sometimes we complain about players but then when they don’t play, we realise how important they are for the team.
“So every press conference you ask me about Nico, every press conference I say that he is an important player; he is doing fantastic on the ball and off the ball. Then he didn’t play against Brighton and everyone was thinking, ‘It is difficult to play without a nine.’
“But we know exactly how good Nico is on the ball and off the player. Christo is a completely different player on the ball and off the ball. For this reason, we probably have to change something because we don’t have a proper nine at the moment.”
Maresca is faced with the option of playing Christopher Nkunku as a striker or deploying Cole Palmer as a false nine in the absence of Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu.
Chelsea will take on Brighton at the Amex Stadium on Friday in a bid to consolidate their fourth position in the Premier League table.
