Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca confirmed his squad will be significantly depleted for Saturday\u2019s meeting with Liverpool, with injuries and suspension limiting his options. In his pre-match press conference Maresca returned repeatedly to the same point: “We have seven or eight players out.” He made the remark after highlighting the extent of the absences several times.<\/p>\n
The most notable omission is Cole Palmer. The forward is being rested to protect a groin problem that has troubled him through the season, with the club hoping a short break will avoid surgery. “I don\u2019t have any update at the moment,” he said of Palmer. “We have a meeting this week to see how it is.”<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s defensive group is hit hard. Tosin Adarabioyo, Wesley Fofana and Levi Colwill are all sidelined through injury, while Trevoh Chalobah must serve a suspension following his red card against Brighton & Hove Albion. In midfield the club is without D\u00e1rio Essugo long term, and Andrey Santos has since joined him on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
Striker Liam Delap is noted as likely to return from a hamstring problem in November, leaving Maresca to consider internal options and youth players to plug immediate gaps.<\/p>\n
The manager signalled confidence in the club\u2019s academy and recent young additions to cope with the shortfall. “I think it’s a fact that I really trust the young players. Not just the young players that we buy, but also the young players from the academy.<\/p>\n
“Again, we gave games last year to Josh Acheampong, having players on the bench, senior players. So that shows that I trust young players. The same thing happened with Ty. So I really trust all the players we have. In this moment we have four or five defenders out. But we\u2019re going to try to adapt and find the right solution for tomorrow.”<\/p>\n
Maresca will have to reshape his selection as Chelsea prepare to face Liverpool at Stamford Bridge with a markedly reduced squad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca says Chelsea could be missing seven or eight players for Liverpool as injuries and bans bite<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3493,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[944,319,945],"class_list":["post-3494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-andrey-santos","tag-cole-palmer","tag-dario-essugo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494","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=3494"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3494\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}