As Thomas Tuchel has pointed out many times in the last few weeks, Chelsea’s issues are not just with the players who are missing through injury or through positive Covid tests.
We can still field XI players, and a few on the bench.
The problem is with the players who are able to play, and therefore get forced into playing game after game to cover for their colleagues.
Trevoh Chalobah played a lot more than expected this season, and was rushed back from a hamstring problem to face Everton last week thanks to the swathe of injuries and Covid infections in midfield.
Of course, inevitably he ended up being taken off hurt, and in quotes on the Chelsea official website, Tuchel took full responsibility for what happened:
“The injury for Trevoh is a very unusual one because we made him play, so it’s my fault. We take huge risks and we made him play in an unused position because none of the central midfielders were there so we tried him for his physicality,” the manager explained.
“He comes from an injury and played too early against Everton but he escaped hopefully luckily enough with just a painful injury and nothing worse.”
Of course the realty is that Tuchel’s hand has been forced by the league’s decision to not postpone any of his team’s games. Let’s hope we don’t have similar problems tonight against Brentford.
