Given the condensed nature of football throughout Europe across the major Leagues there are many squads facing multiple injuries to their key stars. Frank Lampard’s Chelsea are fortunate to be a club with limited concerns in this area ahead of this week’s fixtures.
Going into the Manchester United game last weekend Lampard only faced two injured stars in his squad with only one of them being longer term. Conversely London rivals Arsenal have as many a SEVEN injured players out ahead of their game against United.
One of the crocked stars is young Scottish midfield general Billy Gilmour who has been out since he injured his knee vs Crystal Palace in July in the Premier League. The injury required surgery and meant Gilmour would be sidelined for 3-4 months. The 19 year old Scotland U21 international had been enjoying a breakthrough season under Frank playing in 11 games in the 2019-20 campaign. Gilmour is only now getting back to training after taking his injury pretty hard in the early weeks due to the obvious disappointment following his very promising play for the first team.
The only other injury affecting the Chelsea first team is a shoulder strain to Spanish goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga who missed the trip to Old Trafford to face Manchester United in the Premier League last Saturday. This was not a big miss for Chelsea as new first choice keeper Senegalese international Eduoard Mendy had recovered from injury and was able to face both Sevilla in the Champions League and Manchester United in the Premier League last week.
Mendy kept clean sheets in both games and fortunately Wily Caballero and recently restored to the 1st team squad club legend Petr Cech were both available to replace the new first choice man at Stamford Bridge. So Arrizabalaga can take his time coming back and he likely will be fit again sooner rather than later. Billy Gilmour looks like he will back to full fitness pretty soon and is expected to in contention to play in the 3rd week of November.
Marcos Alonso is one of the other Blues to be in doubt of missing the trip to Russia and it may be Emerson who gets the call not to over burden Ben Chilwell who is only just back from injury.
So Chelsea can report good news from the treatment table and hopefully the club’s good fortune in this area will continue as they prepare for the Champions League group game away to FK Krasnodar and the trip to face Burnley away in the Premier League.
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