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Reece James has opened up on the difficulty of his latest injury recovery after Gary Neville and Roy Keane raised concerns over the Chelsea captain\u2019s availability.<\/strong><\/p>\n James suffered another hamstring problem during England\u2019s World Cup campaign and missed three matches before returning against Norway.<\/p>\n The 26-year-old admitted he faced an uncertain wait while completing an accelerated rehabilitation programme away from the rest of Thomas Tuchel\u2019s squad.<\/p>\n He eventually played almost 50 minutes across midfield and right-back as England secured a 2-1 extra-time victory in the quarter-final.<\/p>\n A Football.London report details James\u2019 response to the latest debate, which followed criticism from Neville and Keane over his repeated fitness problems.<\/p>\n James\u2019 injury record has often dominated the discussion around his ability.<\/p>\n However, his quality and influence remain clear whenever he is available. Tuchel trusted him to start England\u2019s World Cup semi-final against Argentina shortly after his return.<\/p>\n James played for more than 80 minutes before appearing to suffer discomfort late in the 2-1 defeat. England are due to face France in Saturday\u2019s third-place play-off.<\/p>\n Chelsea will assess him before he joins Xabi Alonso\u2019s pre-season preparations.<\/p>\n The new head coach has already removed any uncertainty over James\u2019 leadership role. As Read Chelsea reported, Alonso confirmed the academy graduate will remain captain and praised his \u201cblue DNA\u201d.<\/p>\n Alonso also highlighted James\u2019 ability to operate inside, overlap from right-back and deliver from set-pieces.<\/p>\n The focus will now return to managing his workload. Chelsea need their captain available consistently, but rushing him through another recovery would risk creating the same problem.<\/p>\n James has spent much of his career answering questions about his fitness. Alonso\u2019s public backing gives him the opportunity to change the conversation through his performances next season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reece James has opened up on the difficulty of his latest injury recovery after Gary…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17998\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Alonso keeps faith with Chelsea captain<\/h2>\n