Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca confirmed Cole Palmer had been carrying a groin complaint in the days leading up to the victory over West Ham. Palmer was withdrawn from the starting line-up before kick-off and was replaced by Estevao.<\/p>\n
The Blues responded emphatically at the London Stadium, winning 5-1 with goals from Joao Pedro, Pedro Neto, Enzo Fernandez, Moises Caicedo and Trevoh Chalonah.<\/p>\n
On Palmer\u2019s availability, Maresca said: \u201cCole in the last four or five days was not 100%.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday he tried the warm-up, but he felt something. So we prefer not to take any risk to get worse. And we\u2019ll see in the next hours if it\u2019s something important or not.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Palace game, he was not 100%. But he is trying to make a big effort for the club, for the team, for the fans. Tonight again he tried again, but it was not very good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Maresca was also asked whether the result demonstrated Chelsea are not entirely dependent on Palmer. He refused to accept simple headlines about reliance on a single player and outlined the context from the past season.<\/p>\n
He said: \u201cYou know already how I feel, that I don\u2019t care about.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are there to say things and people, in general, they are there to say something. The ones that they say that we are just a Cole team, for sure, Cole is our best player, no doubt. For sure, when we have Cole, we are a much, much, much better team.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I think we already showed last year, in two or three months, where Cole, unfortunately for us, was not 100%. When we achieved top four, that no-one expected. And the most important thing, no-one asked me in the first season to finish top four in the Champions League. They asked me in two years (to finish) in the Champions League.\u201d<\/p>\n
The manager\u2019s comments underlined a cautious approach to Palmer\u2019s injury while noting the squad\u2019s capacity to deliver a comprehensive win in his absence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Palmer withdrew before kick-off with a groin concern; Maresca said Chelsea coped in a 5-1 win. Plus.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1982,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,438],"tags":[319,59,242],"class_list":["post-1981","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-west-ham-united","tag-cole-palmer","tag-featured","tag-injury"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981","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=1981"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1983,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1981\/revisions\/1983"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1981"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1981"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1981"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}