Chelsea have been given a welcome lift with Marco Palestra and Emmanuel Emegha back in full training, offering some relief during a period of growing concern over fitness issues across the squad.<\/p>\n
The pair were both shown training by the club\u2019s social media team as Chelsea prepare for their next Premier League fixture against Bournemouth on Oct. 10. Their return gives Alonso added depth at a time when selection options have been stretched.<\/p>\n
Palestra, who was used heavily in preseason, is expected to strengthen the wing-back positions when he is available again. His versatility on either flank could prove useful, especially with Chelsea having already rotated through Jorrel Hato, Pedro Neto, Pep Chavarr\u00eda and Malo Gusto in those roles this season.<\/p>\n
Emegha\u2019s return also gives Alonso another option in attack. Even so, the striker is not guaranteed significant minutes, with Jo\u00e3o Pedro and Danny Welbeck having both made goalscoring starts to the campaign.<\/p>\n
While the return of Palestra and Emegha is positive, Chelsea are still waiting on updates involving several more important injury cases.<\/p>\n
Jo\u00e3o Pedro missed the 3\u20130 defeat to Brentford before the international break because of a knee problem, and that issue also forced him to withdraw from Brazil duty. He is expected to be available against Bournemouth, though nothing has been confirmed.<\/p>\n
Reece James was also absent from the Brentford defeat and later left out of Thomas Tuchel\u2019s England squad. His availability for the Bournemouth match remains unclear.<\/p>\n
The same uncertainty applies to Cole Palmer and Mois\u00e9s Caicedo. Palmer withdrew from the England squad with a muscle issue and was criticised by Tuchel as a result, while Caicedo has managed only 14 competitive minutes this season because of a calf injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Palestra and Emegha are back in Chelsea training, but major injury doubts remain ahead of Bournemouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21072,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,2035],"tags":[59,242,180],"class_list":["post-21073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-chelsea-news","tag-featured","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21073","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=21073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}