Chelsea have been dealt another injury blow as Cole Palmer will be sidelined following an accident at home that left him with a fractured toe. Manager Enzo Maresca confirmed the attacker will miss the next trio of fixtures, ruling him out of matches against Burnley, Barcelona and Arsenal.<\/p>\n
“He is probably not available for tomorrow [against Burnley] for sure, Barcelona for sure or Arsenal for sure,” Maresca told reporters. “Unfortunately, he had an accident at home where he hit his toe. It is nothing important, but he won\u2019t be back in the next week.<\/p>\n
“He was very close [to returning]. He was back with us almost with the groin, which is very good news, but he has this small problem. [His toe] is fractured.”<\/p>\n
Palmer is believed to have stubbed the toe on his left foot against a door in his house. The earliest match he could feature in is scheduled for Dec. 3, when Chelsea travel to Elland Road to face Leeds United, but when asked about a return date Maresca replied: “Don\u2019t know.”<\/p>\n
The absence is notable given Palmer\u2019s output since joining the club. He racked up 74 goals and assists in his first two years with Chelsea following what was, at the time, a slightly surprising \u00a342.5 million ($55.5 million) move from Manchester City. His loss comes as Chelsea sit third in the Premier League table, six points behind the Gunners, and inside the Champions League campaign they are 12th in the standings halfway through the league phase.<\/p>\n
The manner of the injury is a reminder that not all football absences happen on the training ground. Chelsea\u2019s history and the wider game include unusual incidents: Dave Beasant once damaged his foot trying to stop a bottle of salad cream, Darren Barnard was sidelined after slipping on his dog\u2019s urine, Michael Stensgaard dislocated a shoulder handling an ironing board, and Santiago Ca\u00f1izares missed a World Cup start after an aftershave bottle injury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cole Palmer will miss at least three matches after fracturing a toe at home, Enzo Maresca confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4598,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,172],"tags":[1047,1089,319],"class_list":["post-4599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-epl","tag-champions-league","tag-chelsea-struggles","tag-cole-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4599","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=4599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}