Chelsea are facing an anxious wait over Emiliano Mart\u00ednez after the goalkeeper was forced off against Everton with a head injury.<\/p>\n
The incident prompted immediate concern. Branthwaite was sat up shortly after, but medical staff rushed on to attend to Chelsea\u2019s stopper, who was visibly in distress on the pitch. After a prolonged spell of treatment, Mart\u00ednez was taken away on a stretcher and went straight to hospital for scans. As he was leaving the field, he appeared to be moving his arms.<\/p>\n
Mike Penders replaced him and became the youngest goalkeeper in Chelsea\u2019s Premier League history. The 21-year-old\u2019s introduction is expected to be the first of many over the coming years, with club officials viewing him as a long-term option.<\/p>\n
Chelsea will not be able to set any proper return timeline until the formal diagnosis is known, although it would be a major surprise to see Mart\u00ednez back before the end of the month at the very least. If the injury proves more serious, his absence could easily stretch beyond that.<\/p>\n
The club are now waiting on the scan results to understand the full picture. That uncertainty could also affect Xabi Alonso\u2019s plans for a busy run of fixtures. Tottenham Hotspur visit next weekend, followed by a Carabao Cup tie with Liverpool, a game for which Mart\u00ednez may have been rested anyway. The month then closes with a meeting with Manchester United before Chelsea travel to Sunderland ahead of the November international break.<\/p>\n
Any extended lay-off would hand Penders a significant run in the side. The towering 21-year-old impressed while on loan with Strasbourg last season, and Chelsea opted to keep him at the club this year rather than send him out again. He has already started both of Chelsea\u2019s Carabao Cup matches, and after his debut, a 2\u20130 win over Luton Town in the second round, Alonso said the Belgian will soon have a major role to play.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Chelsea are waiting on scan results after Emiliano Mart\u00ednez was stretchered off with a head injury against Everton.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21807,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,190,2035,687],"tags":[1066,242,180],"class_list":["post-21808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-carabao-cup","category-chelsea","category-chelsea-news","category-everton","tag-carabao-cup","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21808","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=21808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21808\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}