Liam Rosenior offered an encouraging fitness update on Reece James and Cole Palmer as Chelsea prepare to face Brentford at Stamford Bridge on Saturday. The manager revealed both players returned to full training on Thursday and are being monitored ahead of what would be Rosenior\u2019s first Premier League outing.<\/p>\n
Rosenior said: \u201cWith Reece and Cole, both of them are training today so we just need to assess them after training and make sure they come through all of the protocols they need to come through.\u201d He added: \u201cBut it will be great to have them back in the squad and at the moment, it looks like they could be.\u201d<\/p>\n
The timing of their potential returns is notable given the west London derby will pit Chelsea against an in-form Brentford side at Stamford Bridge. Rosenior and the club will seek to manage minutes and protocols carefully if the duo are included in the squad.<\/p>\n
The manager also confirmed a virus is currently affecting the Chelsea camp. Liam Delap and Jamie Gittens have been struck down, along with several members of staff, and club doctors are working to contain the issue.<\/p>\n
There remain longer-term absentees in the squad. Levi Colwill has been sidelined with an ACL injury since the start of the season, while Mykhailo Mudryk is provisionally suspended over a failed drugs test.<\/p>\n
Rosenior provided an update on Rom\u00e9o Lavia, who has been absent since the draw with Qaraba\u011f in early November and has made just seven appearances across all competitions since the Club World Cup. \u201cRom\u00e9o is on the pitch, he\u2019s not with the group yet but we can see him out on the grass doing his rehab. He is looking really, really good,\u201d Rosenior said. He added: \u201cI love him, firstly as a lad but also as a player. He\u2019s someone I would love to work with in the long term because he\u2019s just an outstanding footballer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosenior says Reece James and Cole Palmer are training as Chelsea tackle Brentford amid a virus. Sat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1383,969],"tags":[1073,1089,319],"class_list":["post-5974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea-news","category-premier-league","tag-acl-injury","tag-chelsea-struggles","tag-cole-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974","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=5974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}