Chelsea\u2019s win over Bournemouth came with an unwelcome note, as Xabi Alonso confirmed that club captain Reece James has suffered another injury. The defender had been expected to be available after returning to training, but he was left out of the squad just a day later.<\/p>\n
James had already missed Chelsea\u2019s defeat to Brentford before the international break, while Thomas Tuchel also left him out of England\u2019s squad because of injury. On Friday, Alonso had sounded encouraged, saying his captain was \u201cready to go\u201d for the Bournemouth match. That made his absence on Saturday a surprise, but the reason quickly became clear after the final whistle.<\/p>\n
Alonso said the problem emerged in training and later showed up during testing.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe felt something in training,\u201d Alonso said after the match. \u201cBut after we did the tests later in the afternoon he had some little issues on the knee, so we need to check how long it will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new issue was described as a knee injury, and it came during Chelsea\u2019s final session before the game. While there was no formal diagnosis, the earlier problem James had been managing before the international break was understood to be muscular. This latest setback therefore appears to be separate, and that will concern Chelsea given the short time span involved.<\/p>\n
Alonso declined to set a return date and instead said that \u201cwe need to assess him week by week.\u201d A trip to Everton is Chelsea\u2019s next league assignment, and a return there is possible in the best-case scenario. Even so, the club may choose caution because of James\u2019s injury history and the importance of avoiding another setback.<\/p>\n
That could mean Chelsea hold him back for longer, with a home London derby against Tottenham Hotspur on Oct. 24 mentioned as another possible target. James has started the season almost exclusively as a central midfielder under Alonso, adding further weight to the decision over when he returns.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea await clarity on Reece James after a knee problem forced him out against Bournemouth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21726,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,2035],"tags":[242,180],"class_list":["post-21727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-chelsea-news","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21727","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=21727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}