Chelsea face Nottingham Forest on Monday with a depleted wide line after injuries and a suspension reduced their senior options. Est\u00eav\u00e3o is recently injured and Mykhailo Mudryk remains suspended, leaving the Blues light on experienced wingers.<\/p>\n
Interim boss Calum McFarlane did not disclose any specific problems for Pedro Neto and Alejandro Garnacho during his prematch press conference, so their absence from the matchday squad came as a surprise. According to Nizaar Kinsella, Neto and Garnacho are both battling knocks. While neither is expected to need long on the sidelines, they were not deemed fit enough to play in Monday’s big game.<\/p>\n
That situation has forced McFarlane into selection adjustments. Cole Palmer gets the nod on the right wing, a tactical choice that is not particularly unusual, while 18-year-old Jesse Derry is handed his first senior start for the club.<\/p>\n
Derry’s promotion will be welcomed by supporters who have been keen to see the teenager given more minutes, particularly as Chelsea’s senior alternatives have struggled to make a consistent impact. Gittens’s injury struggles have left him unable to win over his new supporters, while Garnacho’s impressive work rate has been countered by an underwhelming end product that has sparked suggestions he could leave the club this summer.<\/p>\n
Like Garnacho, Derry joined Chelsea last summer, signing from the Crystal Palace academy. The 18-year-old has impressed at youth level, scoring six goals in 17 PL2 appearances and adding five goals in eight UEFA Youth League matches.<\/p>\n
McFarlane will hope the blend of Cole Palmer’s experience on the wing and Derry’s youth spark can offset the temporary losses. Neto and Garnacho remain part of the squad long term, but Chelsea will be without both for this fixture as they manage short-term knocks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Neto and Garnacho miss Monday’s clash with Nottingham Forest, Jesse Derry handed first senior start.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13621,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1383,298],"tags":[1446,227,1640],"class_list":["post-13622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-chelsea-news","category-nottingham-forest","tag-academy","tag-alejandro-garnacho","tag-pedro-neto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}