Maresca delivers devastating injury news with “long term” problem for striker | OneFootball

Enzo Maresca is taking his press conference ahead of Chelsea’s match against Brighton in the FA Cup, and as is traditional, it began with some team and injury news.

There were two players the press wanted to know about in particular, strikers Nicolas Jackson and Marc Guiu.

Jackson started the game against West Ham on Monday night and looked to have tweaked his hamstring a little. He played on, but came off early in the second half after clutching the back of his leg for a second time.

He was replaced by Guiu, getting a rare chance to play more than 5 minutes in the league. The Spaniard ran around in his typical industrious style, and would have been looking forward to keeping up that momentum by playing this weekend. But then the worst possible thing happened – in the last minute of the game he fell in an awkward way while trying to control the ball in the box.

Maresca delivers devastating striker injury news

Marc Guiu looks to have injured himself against West Ham.

We’ve been waiting since then for the injury update, and now we have it.

“Marc, unfortunately, it’s a bad injury. Nico is better.”

Asked if Jackson would be fit for tomorrow’s game, Maresca said it “could be a risk,” so we really doubt we’ll see him given it’s a cup game.

Pressed for more information on Guiu, Maresca said it “could be” a long term injury, and put the timescale of the “long injury” on “weeks or months.”

The irony is just too much – both your strikers going down injured on the night that the transfer window closes, when you’ve not bought a player to play in that position. Guiu is raw (and some would say just not very good) but at least he’s a striker who knows the position and has had all year integrating into this team.