Chelsea’s preseason this year is particularly punishing.
Not only have they flown all the way to the USA to do it – they’re also going at a truly punishing rate.
The midweek-weekend rhythm will be helping this group get used to that schedule ahead of a season back in European competition, and it’s also meaning plenty of chances for minutes for a bloated squad, all of whom need match practice.
The final group of players to return from holiday – Euro finalists Cole Palmer, Conor Gallagher and Marc Cucurella – will not be flying out. They will join training at some point next week, after the team flies back on Wednesday.
It’s hard to see any of them getting many minutes in the final friendly after that, which comes up on Sunday against Inter Milan. They will only have had a session or two with the team at that point. So realistically they are going to go into this season as undercooked as possible, with few or no minutes played before we face Man City on the 18th to get the Premier League season started.
Everyone else will be up and running by then at least – including Moises Caicedo, who is training now but has yet to play a minute. He will have time to ramp up to fitness before the big kick off, but only just.
The cutoff
So it looks like that will be the cutoff – players like Caicedo and Jorgensen who arrived this week are definitely in the frame to start matchday 1. Players who don’t join the group until the end of next week are definitely out.
That means we can already start to draw some interesting lineup conclusions – the absence of Palmer, for example, is going to create an opportunity for Noni Madueke on that right wing, one he might not get again for a while given how much competition there is in attacking areas. Despite having just 6 goals and 2 assists in 18 months, he’s getting a vital chance here.
