Two good, two bad, one ignored: fitness update on Chelsea’s absent five rings bells ahead of Saturday game | OneFootball

For the second week in a row, Liam Rosenior has taken his press conference a day earlier than expected, making things a little frustrating as we look for late team news updates.

Rosenior gives update on four of his five short term absences from last night

Liam Rosenior speaks to the media ahead of Arsenal.

The Chelsea boss covered a number of topics in his presser today, but of course what we all want to know about is the team news. Five players missed last night’s game against Arsenal, on top of the likes of Levi Colwill, who is out with a long term injury.

On those five, it doesn’t sound good for Liam Delap or Jamie Gittens. They both have a virus and didn’t train today. Rosenior said that virus was spreading, and some of the staff have caught it.

Meanwhile Cole Palmer and Reece James, perhaps the two players we want back most, did train today.

“Both of them are training today, so we just need to assess them after training, make sure that they come through all of the protocols they need to come through,” Rosenior said.

“It would be great to have them back in the squad. At the moment, it looks like they could be.”

There was no update on Malo Gusto – but if James is back and able to play, Gusto can take a break anyway.

In other news…

Fabrizio Romano went live this afternoon to speak about some of Chelsea’s planned activity for January, with an update on Josh Acheampong’s future bound to please Blues fans.

Estevao was superb in the defeat to Arsenal last night, increasing the calls for him to be a major part of this team as a starter going forward. His dribbling was sublime, and pretty much the only way that Chelsea were able to get at the Gunners defensively.