Three unnamed Chelsea players have tested positive for Covid-19 in the build-up to Thursday’s Premier League meeting with Everton.
Thomas Tuchel is already without Mateo Kovacic, who tested positive last week and will be free to return to training on Friday.
According to Nizaar Kinsella, the Blues have now identified three more positives, and while there is no mention of who has contracted the virus, the belief is that all three were involved in a group training session on Wednesday.
Of those three, two were believed to be in Tuchel’s plans for the game.
As it stands, the outbreak is not believed to be any threat to the game. Chelsea hope to have contained the spread of the virus, but as we have seen among other sides, that can change quite quickly.
Everton arrived in London around the same time as the reports of Chelsea’s positive tests emerged online…
Chelsea will be incredibly reluctant to postpone the game unless absolutely necessary, given they remain in five competitions and are already losing a chunk of their Premier League time to the upcoming Club World Cup.
The Blues don’t exactly have a lot of numbers for squad rotation either. Kovacic is in isolation, Ben Chilwell is injured and both Trevoh Chalobah and N’Golo Kante are only just returning to action after spells out through injury.
Brentford boss Thomas Frank led the call for this current round of fixtures to be postponed, calling for a circuit-breaker while the number of cases continues to rise.