Chelsea manager Liam Rosenior confirmed Marc Cucurella was forced off at half-time during Tuesday\u2019s 2\u20132 draw with Leeds United because of a hamstring problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, at half-time, he felt his hamstring,\u201d Rosenior confirmed after the final whistle. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a tactical change. It was one that was enforced and Cucu\u2019s been top and hopefully he\u2019ll be O.K.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll scan him and make sure we find out if he\u2019s available for the next game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosenior and the club will await the scan results with cautious optimism. There were no outward signs of a serious issue during the match, which offers some reason for hope that the Spain international will avoid a lengthy spell on the sidelines.<\/p>\n
Chelsea face Hull City in the FA Cup fourth round on Feb. 13. That game will almost certainly come too soon for Cucurella, although the player would very likely have been rested for the fixture regardless. An eight-day gap after the Hull tie could provide the window needed for a minor problem to settle, with the Blues then hosting Burnley on Feb. 21. Burnley sit 19th in the standings and represent the type of opponent Chelsea would expect to beat even without Cucurella.<\/p>\n
The schedule becomes more testing after that. Chelsea travel to Arsenal on March 1 and visit Aston Villa three days later on March 4. Those fixtures could have a significant influence on both the Premier League title race and Champions League qualification scenarios.<\/p>\n
Cucurella has been the club\u2019s senior left back since Renato Veiga left in January 2025. Finding cover was a recruitment priority and Chelsea brought in Hato, the versatile 19-year-old, who replaced Cucurella against Leeds and now seems likely to receive a sustained run in the starting lineup. If Rosenior opts to rotate, right back Malo Gusto may be asked to fill on the left as he did under Enzo Maresca, though that option may depend on Reece James\u2019s ongoing battle with injury and illness.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rosenior confirmed Cucurella was withdrawn with a hamstring problem; scans will show availability ok<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6795,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[190,1383],"tags":[1465],"class_list":["post-6796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-chelsea-news","tag-cucurella"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6796","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=6796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}