Chelsea goalkeeper Emiliano Mart\u00ednez has moved to calm concerns after undergoing emergency surgery following a serious collision against Everton.<\/p>\n
The Argentina international was stretchered off and taken straight to hospital after the head-on incident, while Everton\u2019s center back was able to play on and complete the match. Mart\u00ednez later shared an update on Instagram from his hospital bed, writing: \u201cThanks to everyone for the messages; the surgery went well,\u201d the 34-year-old wrote. \u201cThe most important thing is that we won, and with a clean sheet . We\u2019ll be back in a few weeks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chelsea have since confirmed that Mart\u00ednez suffered a fractured jaw. He was assessed on the pitch for eight minutes by medical staff before being taken to hospital, still conscious. Xabi Alonso also said after the match that his summer recruit had sustained a \u201cconcussion\u201d while trying to clear Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall\u2019s cross, a diagnosis that is likely to push back any return further.<\/p>\n
His own estimate of \u201ca few weeks\u201d leaves room for interpretation, particularly given the range of recovery times for players coming back from broken jaws. The wider context matters too. At this summer\u2019s World Cup, Austrian defender Stefan Posch broke his jaw in his nation\u2019s opening group game but was back in contention against Argentina five days later wearing a protective mask. In that case, however, surgery was not required.<\/p>\n
If Mart\u00ednez is out until the November international break, which begins for Chelsea on Nov. 9, he would miss four matches. That is still a significant stretch, with Tottenham Hotspur visiting next Saturday before Chelsea travel to Liverpool for the Carabao Cup fourth round. Manchester United then come to the club on Halloween, followed by a trip north to Sunderland.<\/p>\n
Before Mart\u00ednez arrived, Alonso had already considered promoting Mike Penders above the error-prone Robert S\u00e1nchez. Chelsea eventually opted for the World Cup winner, but Penders now has an opening to make his case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mart\u00ednez has outlined a recovery that could keep him out for several Chelsea matches this autumn.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21821,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[1066,242,180],"class_list":["post-21822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-carabao-cup","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21822","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=21822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21821"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}