Chelsea star Callum Hudson-Odoi chooses to represent Ghana over England at the international level. (Photo by Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)
Thomas Tuchel has provided a concerning injury update on Chelsea ace Reece James ahead of their match against Norwich City. The Premier League game will take place tomorrow at Carrow Road as his team look to continue their momentum against the relegation-threatened hosts.
The Blues have some concerns in the build-up to tomorrow’s fixture, with James being the major one among them. He has recently returned from a long term injury and made a real impact before picking up a blow against Burnley. He was subbed off with a muscle issue and has missed team training since then. Tuchel has now addressed the matter in the pre-match press conference (h/t Football.London), which took place today.
“Everybody was on the training pitch today except for Ben Chilwell and Reece James, who has some muscular problems after his three games. Not his injured leg but the other leg. It needs examination. We thought maybe he could be on the pitch today but he couldn’t. He felt it during the match, that’s why we took him out and it didn’t get better so we are worried.”
The German boss has also revealed that everyone else was involved in training, which means that Cesar Azpilicueta, Marcos Alonso and Callum Hudson-Odoi have overcome their fitness issues. Ben Chilwell was also pictured at Cobham even though he was unavailable in team training sessions. There were some beliefs that Chilwell could return early, but those were shut down by the coach.
“I think the one minute he was out on the grass they took a photo. The weather made it possible he could do the exercise outside. They made him smell the grass and get a bit excited, but nothing close to football or team training.”
The blow to James could not have come at a worse time given that we are still challenging on multiple fronts. To add to our woes, any hopes of Ben Chilwell returning to action was also shut down by Tuchel.
Fortunately, the Englishman’s injury has nothing to do with the previous hamstring setback. That would no doubt give a sigh of relief to all of the fans. Now we have to wait for the result of the examination to get an idea about the exact degree of the blow.
We could possibly see him get sidelined for the match against the Canaries as a safety measure. For that reason, it is good to know that Azpilicueta has returned to contention. After all, we do not have any other alternatives to be used in that position.
The same can be said for Alonso since Chilwell is already out injured. As for Hudson-Odoi, let’s hope that he can continue from where he left off for us if he gets featured tomorrow. We could see that happen since Dean Smith’s side is one of those teams who have been really poor for a while.
Hence, we can afford to rotate the squad a bit more and even use the returnees to an extent due to the “reduced” intensity. That does not mean we are taking them lightly in any case. Let’s hope to see the team continue to build momentum following their victory against the Clarets.
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