Chelsea have received an early boost with Emiliano Mart\u00ednez back in training sooner than expected after managing a broken jaw with specialist protective gear.<\/p>\n
The Argentina international was seen on Thursday wearing a strap around his jaw as well as a hat, a sign that his recovery may be moving quickly. Mart\u00ednez has looked for equipment that could help speed up his return, and after only three weeks there is now a chance he could be available again. Whether he has been cleared for competitive action is still unclear.<\/p>\n
That leaves a decision for Xabi Alonso. If Mart\u00ednez is ready, he must choose between restoring the experienced goalkeeper to the starting side or keeping faith with Mike Penders, who has recently been handed a chance in the team.<\/p>\n
Penders has already experienced the highs and lows of senior football. He made a costly mistake in the 2-0 defeat to Tottenham Hotspur, but responded with a clean sheet against Manchester United. In that match, he produced a brilliant save to deny Bryan Mbeumo, a moment that earned him a nomination for the Premier League Save of the Month award for October.<\/p>\n
The question now is whether that form is enough to justify an extended run in the side. Mart\u00ednez was brought in this summer to add experience to the squad, while Penders is still learning at 21 and needs matches to develop. Yet if he remains on the bench, that experience will not come easily.<\/p>\n
Chelsea are no strangers to goalkeepers using protection. Petr \u010cech wore a padded headguard after fracturing his skull in October 2006, and continued with it for the rest of his career. Mart\u00ednez will hope his own recovery does not lead to anything similar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Mart\u00ednez is back in training early, leaving Alonso to decide between experience and Penders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[242,180],"class_list":["post-22261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-injury","tag-player-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22261","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=22261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}