Naomi Girma is available again, and has not played a league minute this season

Chelsea's team sheet on Saturday afternoon listed four unused substitutes. Peng, Rudz, Girma, Las.

Chelsea beat Birmingham City 2-0 at Stamford Bridge. Girma watched it from the bench, two days after her head coach said she was available to play.

Sonia Bompastor's Thursday press conference was published on Chelsea's own website under a headline calling it a positive injury update on three players. "Nay is back in the group and will be with the group tomorrow for the game," Bompastor said. "Nat Bjorn is back, and Melvine Malard is also back in the squad." She went on to explain why the timing mattered to her. "It's really important to have as many players available as possible because I think if you want to maintain the intensity, you need to be able to rotate and have some fresh legs coming into every game."

Two of the three got the fresh legs. Malard came on in the sixty-third minute and scored in the seventy-first. Bjorn came on in the eighty-seventh. Girma did not come on.

Two starts since April 17, both of them in Europe#

Here is the season, from Chelsea's published team sheets.

Girma started both legs of the Champions League qualifier against Real Sociedad, at home on August 26 and away on September 2. Chelsea won 5-2 and 1-0 and went through 6-2 on aggregate. She has not played since.

She was on the bench for the league opener against Aston Villa on September 5 and stayed there. That one was rotation and Chelsea said so: Bompastor changed four starters after the midweek trip to San Sebastian, and Girma was one of the four who dropped out. She was not in the squad at all at Manchester United on September 13, and Bompastor explained that afterwards. "Naomi just picked up a small injury," she said. "She maybe won't be available for the next weeks."

The next weeks turned out to be five days. On Saturday she was back in the squad and still did not play.

So the count is three Women's Super League matches and no minutes. Chelsea have taken seven points from the three and the only goal they have conceded in the league went in off one of their own defenders. That is the case against playing her and it is a real one. A back line winning 5-0 and 2-0 is not a back line a manager takes apart to give a returning player a run-out.

It is also indistinguishable from a manager who has made up her mind, and nothing published this week separates the two.

The United States have not seen her since Commerce City#

Girma's last appearance for the United States was on April 17 against Japan, in Commerce City, Colorado, and she started it. That is 155 days ago. The team has played twice since, both against Brazil in June, and she was not in either squad. The roster U.S. Soccer publishes on its own team page today lists 26 players, eight of them defenders, and she is not among them.

Spain come to Audi Field in Washington on October 10 and to Subaru Park in Chester on October 13. Emma Hayes has not named a squad for either.

When she does, the defenders she names will mostly be women who have been playing every week. Kennedy Wesley, who started the last match the United States played, has made 25 starts for San Diego Wave this season and no substitute appearances. The most recent of them was on Friday night against Kansas City. The NWSL regular season is still running, so her club form and Emily Sonnett's and Avery Patterson's will all be current on the day the squad is picked. Girma's will be two Champions League qualifiers in August and September.

The question in front of Hayes in three weeks is narrower than whether Girma is good. It is whether a defender who has been on a field twice since April 17 is one you put into a match against Spain, and whether October is the month to find that out or the month to leave her at her club and get her playing.

The fixtures that could answer it#

Chelsea play the first match of the Champions League league phase against Austria Vienna at Plough Lane on Wednesday evening, then Arsenal at Stamford Bridge next Sunday. Bompastor described the stretch she is entering as three games in a week and six in the next two weeks, which is exactly the pile-up that produces minutes for a defender coming back from a knock.

If Girma plays in that stretch, the October squad becomes a straightforward call. If she does not, Hayes will be choosing between a defender with two competitive matches behind her since April 17 and several who played last weekend.

And the friendlies are not the real deadline anyway. After Spain, the next match on the United States calendar is the Concacaf W Championship quarter-final against El Salvador on November 27 in Mansfield, Texas. Two friendlies in October are where a coach finds out what she has. A knockout match in November is where it costs something.

Called Shot#

Girma plays at least one competitive minute for Chelsea on or before October 4.

Six games in two weeks is a lot of football for a squad to get through, Bompastor named rotation as the reason she wanted bodies back, and the bar here is one minute. But she has now been available for two matches this season and played neither, her manager used the other two returning players on Saturday and not her, and the next two on the calendar, a Champions League opener and a London derby, are the two a manager is least likely to rotate.