One essential Chelsea starter is in and another is out after mid-international fitness update
Nizaar Kinsella’s mid-international break update for the Evening Standard has some good new and some bad news.
He points out that Enzo Fernandez is set to play at 3am UK time on Wednesday morning, and then faces a 14 hour flight home, restricting him to a maximum of one training session before our next game. Kinsella says that this “will likely see Fernandez named on the bench” for that game.
We had pretty much drawn the same conclusions ourselves, and now it’s been confirmed that Enzo isn’t coming back early and will stay with Argentina all week, we can quite confidently rule him out of this Saturday’s match. We will likely see Conor Gallagher drop deeper to play alongside Moises Caicedo, with Cole Palmer possibly moving central and creating space for another attacker in the team against a stricken Burnley side.
Kinsella does confirm that Malo Gusto’s issue that brought him back early from France duty is minor, and that the full back should be ready to go by the time we reach Saturday 3pm. That’s a huge relief, and a big boost for our chances given the form he’s in.
