“Fortunately…” – Enzo Maresca gives update on two Chelsea players ahead of Champions League game | OneFootball

We’re into the real meat of the season now, and there’s so much for Enzo Maresca to talk about in every press conference at the moment.

The weekend’s draw with Bournemouth is still fresh in the memory, and last night the manager was asked about a player who picked up an injury in that game.

Maresca’s important update on two injured players

Liam Delap nurses his injured shoulder.

Liam Delap looked to have dislocated his shoulder – immensely painful and enough to keep him out for a good few weeks.

However, Maresca was at least able to confirm that it wasn’t anything worse than that:

“Yeah, Liam fortunately is not any fracture, so that is good news.”

A fracture, either to his arm or to his clavicle, would have extended the recovery period significantly. We feared the summer signing could miss two months by the time he’s actually back on the pitch, but in fact now we’d probably put it closer to a month.

It’s still not ideal, and Maresca will have to find solutions, but it could be a whole lot worse.

Cole Palmer also didn’t train yesterday, and Maresca confirmed that this was just part of his recovery process from his own injury:

“Cole is part of his process in this moment, he’s not available, he can’t play two games in a row in three days. So we’ve planned that and it’s just a way to protect him.”

In other Atalanta news…

The team selection tonight is going to be really interesting – Moises Caicedo is back, but there are a lot of other question marks as Chelsea look to take a major step forwards with 3 points.

Enzo Maresca spoke in his press conference about the threat that Atalanta have, but most of all his admiration for the project put together there. It is not common to hear him speak so emotively.