Chelsea’s latest injury report is out, and the exciting change is Christopher Nkunku. He’s been upgraded to “participating in team training,” meaning he’s certain to get some action on the pitch in before the season ends – he might even have enough time to make an impact on our European places.
Nkunku has basically been the summary of the whole season for Chelsea fans. He was out from before the campaign even began, and the focus became on his return solving all problems. The hype built to unsustainable levels, and when he did eventually play, it was bound to be a disappointment.
Since then he’s had a series of smaller issues, and at no point has he really had a long enough run to get up to speed. Inevitably, this kind of deflation of hype has led to some backlash – we’ve even seen some impatient fans even saying he’s not cut out for Premier League football:
“We will assess him day-by-day. He is in some part of the training session and we will see what his reaction of his body is and we hope to have him back before the end of the season,” the coach explained.
The rest of the group
Levi Colwill is listed as still in his rehab programme, as is Robert Sanchez. That rules them out for tomorrow’ game, while Raheem Sterling, Axel Disasi and Enzo Fernandez are not listed, meaning they at least have a chance of featuring.
There were other notes from Pochettino in his presser, although he wasn’t revealing much about his intentions for the game, as you’d expect.
Fernandez looks likely to be risked, even despite talk of surgery on a hernia that could be needed after this game. Sterling will probably play if he’s recovered from his food poisoning sufficiently, although without knowing what his sharpness was like in training, it’s very hard to make an outside assessment on his chances.
Mykhailo Mudryk and Noni Madueke will be hoping the England winger isn’t quite ready, so they can get another undeserved chance to impress.
Can’t wait to see Nkunku on the pitch