Devastating news confirmed for Chelsea as elite player left out without warning | OneFootball

There’s good news and bad news from tonight’s Chelsea lineup.

Nicolas Jackson is back after two months out. Cole Palmer is back after missing the Arsenal game – and hopefully in position to shake off his spell of bad form now that his old mate Nico is playing.

Noni Madueke isn’t fit enough to start, but does make the bench. That adds some important, effective attacking threat to Enzo Maresca’s squad.

But there’s bad news too – Reece James is on the bench. That must just be precautionary, given he played for England last week. But it is slightly odd – we fully support the decision to only ever start him once a week, but if he was going to start one of this week’s games, why not this one?

Meanwhile Romeo Lavia is out, as we found out yesterday. His injury problems are beyond frustrating now. He has comeback after comeback and can never make them stick. Enzo Maresca told us yesterday that it was only a minor issue, but then again they’re all minor and he’s still prevented from playing.

Fofana absence another worrying sign

Wesley Fofana applauds the fans.

But most worrying of all is Wesley Fofana’s absence. We didn’t hear anything about it yesterday, so either it this is a new issue or the manager is keeping it quiet.

His Chelsea nightmare continues – various insiders at Stamford Bridge have confirmed it’s an injury, but we don’t yet have information about how serious it is.

Between James, Lavia and Fofana you’ve got three players who can’t be relied upon to stay fit. A team can manage one of those, if they’re good enough to make a difference, but three is just not manageable.