Enzo Maresca has acknowledged that Jo\u00e3o Pedro, Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez and Mois\u00e9s Caicedo are all carrying injuries that have limited their training time and availability.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Jo\u00e3o is not training every day because he\u2019s managing a little bit himself from the injury problem,\u201d the Italian boss outlined. \u201cMoi [Caicedo] is exactly the same, Enzo [Fern\u00e1ndez] is exactly the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have four or five players that unfortunately, because of some problems, they cannot work every day and they try to make the effort to play the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caicedo and Fern\u00e1ndez arrived at the Nottingham Forest game as fitness doubts. Fern\u00e1ndez did not feature, while Caicedo was only fit enough to come off the bench and, the club report says, helped swing the contest at the City Ground. He was unable to produce the same decisive impact in the subsequent match with Sunderland. Wilson Isidor’s diligent man-marking brief stifled Chelsea\u2019s most important midfielder throughout a frustrating afternoon.<\/p>\n
Jo\u00e3o Pedro has been asked to shoulder a regular starting burden despite his own fitness issues because of limited attacking options. Summer exits for Nicolas Jackson and Christopher Nkunku, combined with a serious injury to Liam Delap, briefly left Pedro as the only senior centre forward. Marc Guiu was recalled from his loan with Sunderland before the summer window closed, but as the match against his fleeting former employers showed, he remains a raw 19-year-old.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo Jo\u00e3o in some games has been better, [against Sunderland] he struggled a little bit,\u201d Maresca conceded. \u201cBut I think overall all the players struggled, so it\u2019s not just about Jo\u00e3o.\u201d<\/p>\n
Delap, sidelined with a hamstring injury sustained when sprinting too vigorously in the opening exchanges of an August clash with Fulham, watched the Sunderland game from the stands. Maresca has suggested the 22-year-old could get some minutes in Wednesday\u2019s Carabao Cup tie against Wolverhampton Wanderers, which would help ease Pedro\u2019s workload.<\/p>\n
Chelsea then face a London derby away to Tottenham Hotspur, a team noted in the report for a potent set-piece threat and a surprisingly mixed home record this season, with Burnley the only Premier League side to have lost in N17 so far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Maresca confirms Jo\u00e3o Pedro, Enzo Fern\u00e1ndez and Mois\u00e9s Caicedo are managing injuries. Fitness issues<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4068,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190],"tags":[1140,1066,1089],"class_list":["post-4069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","tag-caicedo","tag-carabao-cup","tag-chelsea-struggles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4069","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=4069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}