A post international break presser is always a good one because we’ve all been starved of club news for two weeks – there’s a lot to catch up on.
Enzo Maresca had a long list of topics to deal with, starting with the freak injury to Cole Palmer which will keep him out for a couple more weeks.
Maresca’s runs down positive injury updates on multiple players
Apart from that, the injury situation is pretty good, as we found out at the end of the presser when Maresca rattled through a few other names:
“Moi [Caicedo] came back last night, we haven’t seen him yet, but we’ll see Moi in a while. But it’s good, Benoit [Badiashile] is back, he can be available for tomorrow, that’s great news for us,” the coach said.
“And then Enzo [Fernandez] and Pedro [Neto], they used the international break to recover a little bit of energy, also to recover from the injury, the problems they had, and they are both available for tomorrow.”
Caicedo returning on a Thursday night and not training today surely means that he’s not going to start tomorrow, after 180 minutes for Ecuador in the international break. But having Badiashile ready to start is great – is Maresca going to break up the Chalobah – Fofana partnership that had just started doing well, however? That seems a risk.
In other presser news…
Fabrizio Romano claimed the other day that Chelsea backup goalkeeper Filip Jorgensen was keen to leave in January, and Maresca was asked to talk about that too.
Maresca got even more tense when asked repeatedly about Axel Disasi, the defender who has come in from the cold to train with the first team and help the development squad.
