Chelsea striker Liam Delap has lost the number nine shirt at the club and is one of several players now training separately to the main squad.

A number of players who could move before the transfer window closes on 1 September – including fellow forward Nicolas Jackson and winger Mykhailo Mudryk – are in a second training group at Cobham.

But club sources insist it is nothing like the “bomb squad” approach taken last season when several players were frozen out.

Fringe players such as Raheem Sterling and Axel Disasi trained at different times last summer, on different pitches and in separate buildings.

Their treatment prompted the Professional Footballers’ Association to contact Chelsea – but it is understood the players’ union has no such concerns with the current approach.

The players in the smaller group are training adjacent to Xabi Alonso’s main squad and joined by defenders Tosin Adarabioyo and Disasi, but also new signings Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson.

There were 12 players in the smaller group on Wednesday, although that number fluctuates. Academy players are also involved, and movement between the two groups remains possible.

Chelsea are seeking £65m for Senegal striker Jackson – who spent last season on loan at Bayern Munich – and £50m for Delap, while French defender Disasi has an asking price of £25m.

Ukraine international Mudryk, 25, has not played a competitive match since November 2024, although he is now free to play after resolving a doping case and is available on loan. Tosin, 28, is attracting interest from Benfica, Marseille and a number of Premier League clubs.

The Blues are trying to reduce the size of their squad before the end of the summer transfer window, with 40 senior players on their books.

Englishman Delap joined the club in a £30m move from Ipswich Town last summer but only scored one Premier League goal in 28 Premier League appearances, 16 of which were as a substitute.

He was awarded the number nine shirt, but that has now gone to fellow forward Joao Pedro.

When Joe Root left the field for the first time in his second stint as England’s Test captain, he did so with Harry Brook’s arm over his shoulder.

Two Yorkshiremen. Two England batters. The only two candidates when England needed to replace Ben Stokes as skipper.

Brook could have appeared scorned after being overlooked for his friend and team-mate. Root could have been keen to show he is the one with the power once again.

Instead, the pair dovetailed throughout as England took the first steps in recovering from previous turmoils to dismiss Pakistan for 171 on day one of their new era at Headingley. It was an encouraging start.

Root had already celebrated his return by winning the toss and watching Ollie Robinson take a wicket with the game’s first ball, and the match was only five balls old when Brook’s influence was first felt.

As Pakistan number three Shan Masood poked, Brook, who has shown himself a canny tactician as white-ball captain, suggested a reinforced gully region.

Root, who was criticised for his feel during his first spell in charge, was happy to agree, though a ruthless streak was soon shown when Jofra Archer was hooked from the attack after two wayward overs with the new ball.

Positioned at mid-off rather than the slips, and with his two young children watching on, he expertly controlled the flow of the game.

Root has made the move from the slips – where he has taken more than two thirds of his joint-record 218 Test catches – to make it easier for him to be in the ear of his bowlers.

It also allowed him to ensure the ball was always returned to the bowler via their captain. Nothing could happen until the 35-year-old had let go of the ball.

Captaining from mid-off was a tactic used by Root’s predecessor Stokes and former skipper Michael Vaughan – another influential figure in Root’s career, having come through the same Sheffield club.

“I might not be as dynamic as Ben but we’ll see if we can make it work,” Root said on Tuesday.

In Ollie Robinson, Jofra Archer, Gus Atkinson and Josh Tongue he has an exciting pace quartet but one still raw.

This is going to be a rather strange series.

England have an old-new captain, and a new-new but absent coach. The country’s cricket community feels in an existential sort of mood post-Hundred, mid-drought, and pre-Stephen Fleming, Their opponents Pakistan arrive with low expectations. On paper, it’s a battle of seventh and eighth in the world, with both sides searching for a bit of context — and a bit of meaning.

As England rattled through Pakistan, dismissing the visitors for just 171, they may have stumbled upon something meaningful. As Ollie Robinson took 5-51, his second five-wicket haul in as many Tests since returning to the side, Root appeared to be finding the leader of his new attack.

The challenges of bowling at Headingley are unique, and plentiful. Some are mental: this is a ground where teams bowl first, win, and as a new ball bowler you are expected to drive that victory.

Some are more technical: the average seamer dismissal here in the last decade is 6.7m from the batting stumps, the fullest for any English venue. The established pattern of play in almost all long-form cricket is the cat-and-mouse over ownership of fuller lengths, a test of bottle for bowler and patience for batter, but rarely is it more pronounced than in Leeds.

Robinson was more than up to the challenge.

Ollie Robinson took a wicket with the first delivery of the series (Stu Forster/Getty Images)

A wicket first ball of the match was the perfect way to re-announce himself having been out of the limelight since the first Test at Lord’s earlier in the summer. There has been a fair bit of water under the bridge in English cricket since then. For Robinson, it was simply a case of picking up where he left off after those seven wickets against New Zealand back in June.

That dismissal — round the wicket, angling into the left-hander’s pad — set the tone for an authoritative display of skilful, accurate bowling.

It soon accounted for Shan Masood; Robinson now over the wicket, typically his preferred angle of approach to left-handed batters, once again in full, and moving, and deadly. His average length in that opening spell was 6.3m, marginally fuller than that designated Headingley danger-zone. The difference was explained by Robinson’s more pedestrian bowling speed.

In helpful conditions — the opening session of an England Test hasn’t seen such seam movement in over two years — he sat back and let the ball do the work.

Ollie Robinson’s pitch map (CricViz)

That is not always how we have seen Robinson bowl.

While his stats at Test level have been excellent since his debut back in 2021, the nature of his threat has changed profoundly. On the first day at Headingley his average degree of swing movement (0.4 degrees) was less than half what he managed in that first summer five years ago. His movement off the surface is unrecognisable compared to his earlier incarnation.

Much like James Anderson, Robinson’s technical journey is one that has taken him from the youthful allure of pitched-up swing to the altogether more reliable qualities of accuracy and seam. Specifically, to wobble-seam.

By presenting the ball not with the proud, upright seam that was sought after by generations of fast-medium bowlers, Robinson looks to bring in an element of random chance, letting a scrambled seam land and deviate the ball in either direction. Often a huge distance. Indeed, 39 per cent of Robinson’s deliveries in Test cricket move a “large” amount off the surface. Nobody can beat that.

The the trajectories at which Ollie Robinson’s deliveries passed the stumps (CricViz)

No doubt that is aided by conditions — the Dukes ball and the typical surfaces for English red-ball cricket — but the combination of this exceptional movement and Robinson’s control of line and length is unmatched, as shown below.

There are better, perhaps more versatile bowlers going around, but Robinson’s threat is rarely seen.

What stood out on the first day, though, was a shift in Robinson’s role; a recasting of English cricket’s trouble-child as the responsible leader of the attack, tasked with guiding the white-ball tearaways back into the world of the red ball.

If one image of a leader is striding out in front of their pack, facing new challenges and environments head on, then another is rather less glamorous but just as important. In this mould, Robinson is the general staying behind and waiting for his troops, preparing the plans for their return. Hello lads, good to have you all back from The Hundred. A good length is right over here.

For much of the day, they either didn’t listen or couldn’t make that change.

Archer was a good metre short of that ‘Headingley-length’, unable to threaten the stumps with more than a handful of deliveries and lacked the insistent control of line which typifies his best Test performances. Atkinson bowled quickly and was England’s fastest bowler of the innings, but was also too short.

Tongue bowled well to pick up late wickets, claiming the fourth five-wicket haul of his 13-Test career, but it was a spell of moments rather than an accumulation of pressure in helpful conditions. Just 36 per cent of his deliveries were on a good length, the lowest of any bowler on either side on day one.

Tongue’s strength is that he can take a different route to Robinson, and end up in the same place, walking off raising the ball to the crowd.

If England are going to make a success of their new strategy, whereby spin is confined to the part-timers, they need two things to work. They need enough of their all-format fast bowlers to be fit simultaneously, and they need the skills of those who happen to be fit on any given day to overlap.

Robinson is fundamental to both those things. Sheltered from the white-ball matches that seem to sandwich every Test series, he is also flexible enough — counter to popular opinion — to remain threatening in all phases of the innings. His second spell, with Jamie Smith up to the stumps, yielded two wickets just like his first, but was arguably more important. England can build an attack around this version of Robinson.

For Root, the man with a second chance at the once in a lifetime job, getting this right is essential. They say a captain is only ever as good as his attack; that attack will only be as good as Robinson allows it to be.

Data and visualisations provided by CricViz.