Xabi Alonso reports new training injury to important Chelsea player

Reece James is not in the Chelsea squad today, and Xabi Alonso gave some information about his issue before kick off.

Chelsea went into the international break just gone with a few injury issues to sort out, and the team sheet for today’s game against Bournemouth shows they were mostly sorted.

Moises Caicedo starts, Joao Pedro starts, Cole Palmer starts, Marco Palestra is on the bench. That is a huge boost for the coach, who has yet to be able to name a full strength team since taking the Chelsea job this summer.

James misses out after training injury

But there was one player missing after all – Reece James didn’t feature, even on the bench. That indicated there was an injury, and before kick off Xabi Alonso spoke to broadcasters where he revealed that his captain had picked up a small injury in training this week.

That’s good news, in a way – it means the issue is unrelated to the one that James had before the international break. We’re sure it’s just an excess of caution, given James’ injury history. We will find out more from Alonso post-game in the press conference.

In other news…

Chelsea’s team news for today is out, and there are some important additions – although no debut for our wing back.

Marco Palestra is finally on the bench for Chelsea and could make his debut today – but they’re already looking at another left back from Serie A.

Our predicted team for this game has Alonso picking from a full strength team for the first time as Chelsea boss.