Chelsea boss Thomas Tuchel was happy to see Tino Anjorin take the pitch for last night's 2-2 preseason friendly draw with Tottenham.
Tuchel admits he had been keen to get Anjorin on the pitch sooner in preseason.
"I'm a bit sad because he trained so well for us in the last half a year and then the race for the top four was on and there was so many decisive matches every three days, so there was not actually the moment to try stuff with young players," explained Tuchel.
"But he showed his quality in every training, so when the season ended we both agreed that he stays for pre-season and he will get his minutes that he deserves. Unfortunately, before the first friendly starts, Tino was the guy to catch the Covid virus and really suffered for 10 to 12 days. You could see it today, which was the first time he could be back on the pitch, and it was quite a lot for him to stand the 30 minutes. So he was very unlucky without having any fault in the situation.
"Honestly, I cannot really judge him on what I saw today because I think he still struggles from his illness. He had some trouble to adapt to the intensity today, but in the first five or 10 minutes when he started it was very promising again. He's confident, he's strong, he's creative. He scores a lot of goals and assists a lot of goals in training, but I wish we would have had the chance to see him against Peterborough, against Bournemouth, against Arsenal, so that he could really make a statement."