Liam Rosenior confirmed that a minor thigh problem kept Cole Palmer out of Chelsea\u2019s Champions League win over Pafos and indicated the forward should be available again for the weekend.<\/p>\n
Rosenior made six changes to the side that began against Brentford last weekend and Palmer was absent even from the deeper matchday squad. The player had completed 90 minutes against Brentford after an earlier recovery from a small thigh issue that had ruled him out of games against Charlton Athletic and Arsenal, but that problem resurfaced in the win over the Bees and the manager decided against risking him.<\/p>\n
Rosenior described the situation prior to kick off: “A little bit of tightness in his thigh,” and afterwards said the decision to keep him out was “precautionary” and not a major concern. The manager added: “He felt something really minor in the game against Brentford, early in the game, so credit for him to keep going through it,” and: “I don\u2019t want to risk any players. He\u2019s got a really good chance to be involved on Sunday [against Crystal Palace].”<\/p>\n
Palmer\u2019s season has been disrupted by a sequence of problems. Across his first two years with the club he produced 74 goals and assists in 100 appearances, but this campaign has been interrupted by a groin issue that caused a lengthy absence between September and November, followed by a broken toe and the current thigh complaint.<\/p>\n
Since returning to action in early December, Palmer has started nine successive Premier League matches and scored three times. Limited game time across the campaign \u2014 13 appearances from a possible 34 in all competitions \u2014 has left his tally at five goals so far.<\/p>\n
In the match against Pafos, Chelsea captain Reece James began in midfield but did not return for the second half. At the time that was taken as a tactical change, with Est\u00eav\u00e3o replacing him and offering the manager more creative options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosenior labels Palmer’s thigh problem minor and expects him back for Sunday against Crystal Palace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6143,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1383],"tags":[1254,1305,319],"class_list":["post-6144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-chelsea-news","tag-adductor-injury","tag-bench-selection","tag-cole-palmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6144","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=6144"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6144\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}