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It was difficult to look too far beyond the headline item from Enzo Maresca on Friday morning – largely because it was to do with Cole Palmer and how the playmaker will miss Chelsea’s next three matches. The club’s medics and Palmer himself (reluctantly, you suspect) have decided that rest is the only cure for the groin issue that has held him back at various points this season.
Palmer will sit it out against Brighton on Saturday, Benfica and José Mourinho on Tuesday and Liverpool next Saturday; all of the matches are at Stamford Bridge. It will then be taken as read that Palmer will not be able to join up with England for the friendly with Wales at Wembley and the World Cup qualifier against Latvia in Riga.
It will be Thomas Tuchel’s fourth camp as the England manager and his third without Palmer because of injury. Which is not ideal in the countdown to the World Cup. The hope at Chelsea is that their main man will be revived by the time they go to Nottingham Forest on 18 October.
And yet, once the Palmer news had been digested, it was actually easy to be assailed by all of the other stuff that is testing Maresca as he reels from a sticky sequence of results and goes into a week that could define the early season for him.
The manager revealed he would be without Tosin Adarabioyo until after the international break because of a calf problem; the centre-half felt it in the wake of last Saturday’s 2-1 loss at Manchester United, where he came on after the early dismissal of the goalkeeper Robert Sánchez.
With that in mind, the last thing Maresca needed was for his back-up goalkeeper, Filip Jörgensen, to come for a third-minute high ball at Lincoln in the Carabao Cup on Wednesday night and punch Wesley Fofana in the head as they both looked to clear.
Fofana was able to play on and he lasted the 90 minutes as Chelsea won 2-1. But he would later present symptoms of concussion and must now observe the relevant protocols, meaning he cannot play for 12 days after the incident. So another central defender will miss Brighton, Benfica and Liverpool.
Levi Colwill is a long-term knee injury absentee and Benoît Badiashile has not played all season and only just returned to training, making him a doubt for Brighton. Maresca’s options at centre-half could extend no further than Trevoh Chalobah and Josh Acheampong. The latter has been ill this week, re-entering the group for training on Thursday.
It is no exaggeration to say that Maresca has problems throughout the spine of his team – from back to front. The recklessness of Sánchez’s red card has been well documented, leading to a one-game ban, which he served against Lincoln.
But if Jörgensen was not great when he replaced him at Old Trafford, failing to come for the high ball that led to United’s second goal, he endured a horrible evening at Lincoln. There were Chelsea fans who thought his connection with Fofana was the only time he located a spherical object. Sánchez is poised to return against Brighton, his previous club, with a point to prove.
In midfield, Maresca is without Dário Essugo, who is a long-term casualty, and Roméo Lavia – like Badiashile – has only just rejoined for training, having not played this season. He is also a doubt. “Roméo and Benoît are better,” Maresca said. “We’ll see if they can join us. Otherwise it will be for the next one.”
With Palmer out, it is an irritation that Facundo Buonanotte, who is on loan from Brighton, is ineligible to face his parent club. Liam Delap’s hamstring injury-absence squeezes Maresca’s options up front. Could the winger Tyrique George continue as the No 9, where he filled in at Lincoln?
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It looks as though Maresca has five players for four central positions: Moisés Caicedo, Andrey Santos, Enzo Fernández, João Pedro and George. Six, if the striker Marc Guiu is included; Maresca has said that the 19-year-old needs to improve.
The theme is physical strain and how to cope with it because it appears to be pressing everywhere. Take João Pedro, a starter in each game until Lincoln when Maresca rested him, admitting the striker was feeling something. João Pedro had his first training session of the week only on Thursday.
“João is better from the problem,” Maresca said. “Since he arrived with us he has played almost every game. So probably that is the reason why he has some problem. In some moments we need to think about giving him some rest.”
It remains impossible to ignore the hangover from the Club World Cup, where Chelsea were victorious, even though Maresca continues to say it is unclear whether the unusually short pre-season that followed has been an issue.
Since the home win over Fulham at the end of August, Chelsea have conceded a stoppage-time equaliser at Brentford and lost at Bayern Munich and United before the Lincoln result. Maresca’s switch to 5-2-1-1 at United after the Sánchez sending-off was criticised and he has had to defend the club’s decision to cast Axel Disasi and Raheem Sterling into exile.
Maresca made it clear that Disasi would not be recalled to answer the problems in central defence. “There is not any information from the club to consider that so at the moment he is not an option,” he said. Maresca, though, recognises the need for solutions.
