Chelsea manager Frank Lampard met the media today via Zoom conference and during the session he gave a fitness update on several of his key players. It was certainly a mixed bag- good news, bad news kind of thing ahead of tomorrow’s clash at home versus Southampton FC. No. 1 Edouard Mendy is out, as is the summer signing in central defense, Thiago Silva.
He is not injured, but he’ll miss out anyway due to the long travel issues he’d dealt with over international break. He has only just returned from representing Brazil in the CONMEBOL qualifying for the 2022 World Cup, and isn’t fully integrated back into the team yet.
You need a great poker face to be a good football manager, because you don’t want to give away your cards. You can polish your poker skills at theedgepoker.com and play as much as you want. And by cards, in this metaphorical sense, we mean what players you have at your dispersal to shape your team and manage your tactical approach. For this media session, with so many fitness concerns, Lampard needed to have a good poker face, and he accomplished that.
He didn’t want to give away too much information for Southampton to exploit. Also, if you want to bet on this game, like you would wager in playing poker online at The Edge, the odds look like this. A Chelsea win can be had at 8/15, with a draw priced at 15/4. If you want to go with the long odds, the underdogs Southampton are backed at 11/2.
“Mendy won’t be fit for this game but we hope he won’t be out for too long,” Lampard told the news conference.
“Thiago Silva after his trip [with the Brazil national team], is not in the squad. He’s not unfit but he’s not ready to play in the weekend’s game due to the travelling he’s done. Ben Chilwell is in the squad.
“He’s got over some of the feelings with the injury he has had for a while that took him out of England squad, so he’s available for tomorrow. Christian Pulisic is in the squad, he’s fit and ready, and Hakim Ziyech is also in the squad. He’s not fit to start but is fit enough to participate in some way, we hope.”
Ziyech will apparently make his Chelsea debut, but only in limited minutes. He did play over a half hour for Morocco during the international break. As for Pulisic, he’s sounded very confident and ambitious in a wide-ranging interview he gave over the break.
While Kepa Arrizabalaga maintains he’ll fight for his place at Chelsea, we think he’ll get passed over here and Lampard will go with Willy Caballero in between the sticks. That’s a bummer for the Spaniard and world’s most expensive goalkeeper, as opportunities for playing time are going to be few and far between. It sounds like Mendy will be back in action before too long.
Southampton FC at Chelsea FC FYIs
Kickoff: Sat October 17, 3pm BST, Stamford Bridge, London
TV: NBCSN (US) BT Sport Box Office, a pay-per-view service (UK)
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.