Maresca’s terrible Chelsea injury update – 3 starters could be out even after international break | OneFootball

The big news from Enzo Maresca’s press conference this afternoon was slightly pre-empted by the fact that the England squad was released an hour before it.

That squad showed no sign of Cole Palmer – his groin problem, which caused him to pull out in the warmup of last week’s game against West Ham and had apparently been bothering him since before that, is clearly quite bad.

We said all along this was the best solution. Rest him tomorrow, allow him 2 weeks off for the international break, and then hopefully have him fit for a busy September and beyond.

Maresca confirms Chelsea star’s absence for West London derby

Cole Palmer in Chelsea warmups. (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Once we’d seen Palmer wasn’t in the England group, we knew more or less what Maresca would say.

“Cole is out, Benoit [Badiashile] is out, Romeo [Lavia] is out. The rest are okay,” the coach said when asked about the squad’s injury status.

Pressed for more information on the severity of Palmer’s injury, he said “we need to see day by day.”

More worryingly, he added that Badiashile and Lavia (two perma-crocks of the highest order) will not even be back after the two week international break.

Thankfully we now have enough depth to deal with those absences.

Chelsea can still find top gear without Palmer

Missing Palmer against the Hammers last week didn’t hurt Chelsea at all – they rattled off 5 goals. Maresca went on to say that he hoped the same thing would happen tomorrow:

“We are a much, much better team with Cole. No doubt. But when Cole is not in the game, we have to find different solution. Last week we found a different solution, tomorrow we have to hope we can do the same.”

Estevao Willian, your time is now…