Our third away game in a week will see us travel to Manchester for a Saturday evening showdown against struggling United. One might think this would be a good time to play them, before they figure things out and start living up to their capabilities (and/or make a coaching change), but it probably would be better for us overall if we could rest for a minute. Alas, that’s not on the cards, and Enzo Maresca seemed to admit in today’s press conference that there are several players right on the edge
of fitness doubts for this one.
Officially, we don’t have any new injuries, but João Pedro was already in need of a rest last weekend, Cole Palmer is just coming back from a groin problem (though he says he’s fine after appearing to go down late against Bayern), and Trevoh Chalobah seemed to hurt his shoulder in the same game before playing out the rest of the contest. Our next midweek fixture is thankfully just a League Cup third round match against lower league opposition, but we’ll need a solid 90 minutes here before we can take the load off for a second.
“Yes, Cole is okay. We have a training session now where we will look at the players. We flew back yesterday [from Munich], so we need to assess some of the guys before we make a decision for the weekend.
“We haven’t had a session since the game on Wednesday, we have some doubts but we will see after today’s training session.”
-Enzo Maresca; source: Chelsea FC
The attempt at rotation last weekend against Brentford didn’t quite work out; can we do better this time?
