Chelsea take on Leeds United in an early kick-off of the Premier League on Saturday and defender Thiago Silva has suddenly been ruled out of this game.
Tammy Abraham is the only player who has been missing with an ankle injury and speaking to the press, Thomas Tuchel has made it clear that the forward will not be ready for this weekend’s clash as Abraham is finding it hard to recover from a knock which he picked up a few weeks ago.
Apart from this, the manager has also revealed that Thiago Silva, who was on the bench for the Everton game, has felt a slight niggle in training this week which is why he’s not expected to be in the matchday squad vs Leeds.
Tuchel said in his pre-match press conference: ‘Thiago had a little setback in training at the end of the training session the day before yesterday. He felt at the very end something around the same area where he was injured so we had to take him off, so he is back into a transition phase but not back into team training.
‘Tammy Abraham has still the ankle pain from the tackle against Burnley.
‘Yesterday he came off [in training], the day before he was fine, so these two are out for tomorrow and everybody else is available. It is still the pain from a tackle a long time ago now. He does not feel really 100 per cent free and comfortable and I can see it in training, even if he finishes training I see it is not 100 per cent that he has trust in it.
‘I have 100 per-cent trust in our medical department, they are fantastic and they take care of it now. First of all it is most important he feels safe and free and feels zero pain, and then we can think about his comeback.’
Chelsea fans would have loved to see Thiago Silva return to the starting line-up but Tuchel will not be too worried about this fresh injury since the trio of Azpilicueta, Rudiger and Christensen have done a stellar job over the past few weeks.
The defensive line has almost unbreachable since the new manager has taken charge of the club and even if Silva was deemed fit we are not so sure the manager would have thrown him into the line-up.
As for Tammy Abraham, the forward is losing personal time due to this injury since Thomas Tuchel has hardly used him up front and the longer he takes to recover, the more issues he will face in trying to prove his worth to the new boss.
