It’s been a long time coming, 1077 days in fact, but on Saturday, Danny Drinkwater finally made another appearance for Chelsea.
The Blues’ forgotten man was given a run out in the pre-season friendly against Peterborough, alongside Jake Clarke-Salter, Trevoh Chalobah, Malang Sarr; Davide Zappacosta, Ross Barkley, Marcos Alonso; Christian Pulisic, Callum Hudson-Odoi and Tammy Abraham, according to The Sun.
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Drinkwater, 31, spent the second half of the 2020/21 campaign on loan at Turkish side, Kasimpasa, but with no goals or assists to his name in the 11 games played, it was nothing short of a disaster.
Once Chelsea are back to their full complement of players, after summer holidays have been completed, then the likelihood is that Drinkwater won’t get anywhere close to Thomas Tuchel’s starting XI or first-team squad.
To that end, the better he can do with his pre-season opportunities, the more chance of him being able to engineer a move away and try and restart his fading career.