Aston Villa are back in action when they travel to Chelsea on Saturday week.
The Blues host Dean Smith 's side at Stamford Bridge with Villa looking to kick on after a start to the Premier League that has seen them record a win, loss and draw from their opening three matches.
Chelsea, meanwhile, are gunning for the Premier League title this season having won the Champions League last season and have begun their season in good form.
They have conceded only one goal across their three matches beating Crystal Palace, Arsenal and drawing at Liverpool.
Thomas Tuchel's side have suffered an injury blow to midfielder N'Golo Kante, who withdrew from the France squad for their World Cup qualifiers over the next week, ahead of the Villa game.
Kante started the Super Cup defeat of Villarreal earlier this month but has only played 63 of a possible 270 Premier League minutes this season, coming off at half-time against Liverpool last time out.
That was because of a recurrence of an ankle problem picked up against Villarreal.
"He is injured, he had to go out," Tuchel said after Liverpool.
He missed the Arsenal game because of pain in his ankle and a little bit of inflammation, nothing serious because he was back in training and, as you could see, he started today.
"In winning the ball in this situation, the opponent fell on his ankle, twisted it again. He immediately had the same pain as before the Arsenal game when he missed it. He was lacking the force to accelerate and we had to take him off.”
Kante was called up to aid France in their quest for World Cup qualification in games against Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ukraine and Finland but will now come back to Chelsea's Cobham training base.
Meanwhile Chelsea, who will be without Reece James for the Villa game because of a red card against Liverpool, should be able to welcome back Christian Pulisic from a period of quarantine after testing positive for coronavirus.
0 comments:
Post a Comment