Why Chelsea fans shouldn’t believe Levi Colwill injury return rumours just yet | OneFootball

Levi Colwill was the surprise feature in Chelsea’s open training session today, with speculation about an early return from injury.

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Clubs are mandated by UEFA to have one training session open to the media before a Champions League game, and usually nothing of interest happens.

In fact, managers are pretty directly incentivised to give as little away as possible. You never see any tactical work done, or anything else which might give away their plans for the game to come.

But it can also be used positively, to send a message, and that’s just what appears to have happened with Chelsea today. Stepping out on the pitch with all his teammates was Levi Colwill, the defender who has been out injured since tearing his ACL on the first day of pre-season training in August.

He took part in the general team warmups and group exercises, a first step back from individual physio work and rehab towards rejoining the team.

Port Vale return seems ambitious for Colwill return

Some accounts on social media are even claiming that the plan is to get him ready in time to play in the next round of the FA Cup, where we face Port Vale.

That game is a month away, and we wouldn’t expect that. The plan has always been to just get Levi back slowly and steadily, and until now the chances of him playing any minutes at all before the end of the season seemed very small.

There’s no doubt that it now looks more likely he will get some minutes, but we wouldn’t expect that even Chelsea’s medical staff are already putting dates on that.

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