Trevoh Chalobah exited Chelsea\u2019s friendly against AC Milan with an ankle injury, though the issue is not thought to be serious. The brief scare did not alter Enzo Maresca\u2019s assessment of his squad ahead of the club\u2019s Premier League opener.<\/p>\n
Maresca confirmed that Chalobah and Wesley Fofana will both be available for the Blues\u2019 first league match next week. \u201cHe will be available for Palace,\u201d he confirmed. \u201cWe are very happy because he is an important player.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manager\u2019s update on Fofana is notable given the defender\u2019s recent fitness record. Fofana has been limited by injury to just 34 competitive appearances for Chelsea since signing in 2022, and had been facing a race against time to be ready for the home clash against Crystal Palace next Sunday. Maresca indicated the Frenchman will be able to play.<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s preparations for the season have been compact after a late return from the Club World Cup. Despite the short pre-season, the team has produced positive results, winning both friendly matches by a combined score of 6-1. The forward line has contributed to that return, with Delap and Pedro singled out by Maresca for strong starts in royal blue.<\/p>\n
On his strikers, Maresca said: \u201cThey are both our strikers, so we need them scoring goals during the season. We are very happy with both of them.\u201d The manager\u2019s comments underline a focus on fitness and attacking form as Chelsea move into the official competitive calendar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca: Chalobah and Fofana fit for Palace as Chelsea end pre-season with 6-1 win tally. Ahead now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[242,696],"class_list":["post-1481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-injury","tag-trevoh-chalobah"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481","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=1481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1482,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1481\/revisions\/1482"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}