Reece James has been ruled out for one month by Chelsea, who have just released an update on the right back’s fitness.
James had been out since early October with a knee injury, and last night made his return to action in the first team. He only lasted one half, limping off after jarring that same knee.
Chelsea statement on James injury 🚨🔵 #CFC
“Reece James underwent assessment earlier today, scan results confirmed a setback with Reece set to be ruled out for up to a month”, club confirms. pic.twitter.com/EQYjWbZJ75
— Fabrizio Romano (@FabrizioRomano) December 28, 2022
There were fears for the worst after that, and it’s never a good sign if a player re-injured an existing issue.
Given all that, a month was probably the least we could expect in terms of time out. Let’s hope this is the end of it – it’s starting to really ruin his career now.
All in all, our top priority is now signing a good backup – something we should have done 18 months ago. If James is out for a full four weeks or more, we would expect that player to be signed and playing before he’s back.
Agree that a backup should have been signed in the summer, but why in the world was James even out there if he wasn’t fully fit (which obviously he wasn’t)? His personal coach has basically implied this was malpractice on the part of the club medical staff. Questions need to be asked about why risks were taken with, arguably, the future of the franchise.