Thomas Tuchel has insisted Chelsea have “no thoughts” of letting Hakim Ziyech leave Stamford Bridge in January.
Ziyech has battled for regular action ever since making the £35million switch from Ajax in 2020.
The 28-year-old has been linked with a loan deal in the January window, but Blues boss Tuchel has rejected the notion.
“At the moment here in Cobham there are no thoughts about his future,” said Tuchel.
“There are no thoughts about a potential change, swap deal or whatever in the winter. I have talked to nobody about that here in Cobham.
“Hakim was not in my office expressing a wish like this so right now, he is a full member of the squad.
“He is an important guy, a very talented guy, a very ambitious guy, and he’s a full part of our squad. He was last season, he is this season and we expect the very best of him all the time.
“But it’s tough competition. I cannot let everybody play all the time 90 minutes, it’s simply impossible.”
Ziyech starred in Chelsea’s pre-season action, scoring in the Blues’ penalty shoot-out win over Villarreal in the UEFA Super Cup final.
But he playmaking forward lost a lot of time and momentum to a troublesome shoulder injury and is only just now working back to his best.
And Tuchel believes the Morocco star’s situation is very simply explained.
“It’s very easy. I said many times he was brilliant in pre-season,” said Tuchel.
“He had an injury which was a huge setback. He played after the shoulder injury with pain and with huge protection which kept him from being totally free, which is necessary for his game and movements and position and style of play.
“Now he’s stepped up in the last games. We had some injuries and he took the chance to have more game time.
“He was decisive, he assisted, he scored. It’s good.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here