Revealed: Chelsea's three stars playing through injuries as Blues battle to keep squad fit against gruelling schedule

Mail Sport report that the Blues find themselves in ‘uncharted territory' this season following the demands of an elongated season over the summer. Their BlueCo ownership have put in extensive work behind the scenes to modernise the club’s sports science, data analysis and use of AI, but no amount of data could analyse a situation which simply had not occurred before.

While early-season injury issues as players re-acclimatise to the demands of the Premier League are natural, the Blues find themselves without nine players ahead of Saturday evening's visit of champions Liverpool. All of Cole Palmer, Tosin Adarabioyo, Wesley Fofana, Andrey Santos, Levi Colwill, Liam Delap and Dario Essugo are injured, while Trevoh Chalobah is suspended, as is Mykhailo Mudryk for completely different reasons.

Head coach Maresca suggested following the Champions League victory over Benfica in midweek that three players are playing through pain, and Mail Sport’s report reveals the players in question to be Moises Caicedo, Enzo Fernandez and Joao Pedro.

The fact that all three of Caicedo, Fernandez and Pedro continue to play is a testament not only to them as players, but also to the serious injury issues going on at Chelsea at this moment in time.

Pedro reportedly asked not to play at Brentford in September but was told by Maresca that he had no choice as the Blues’ only centre-forward available. While Caicedo is Chelsea’s only ever-present player so far this season, the ‘beating heart’ of the team and an irreplaceable component of the midfield alongside Fernandez.

Whether Chelsea can afford to offer any of the trio a rest is a genuine question. While the club’s ownership ensured to have two players in each position ahead of the season in case of this exact problem, the fact that all three see their understudies currently out injured makes for a growing concern. If the likes of Caicedo were to see his body break down and fail him – the 23-year-old has played over 5,000 minutes of football for his club alone since the start of last season – Maresca would be faced with a real issue.

The fact that the Blues have the lowest running stats in the Premier League so far this season also speaks volumes. Their total of 616km ran so far this season is significantly less than next-least West Ham United with 638km, while most sides have run between the 650km - 670km mark. Arsenal have run more than 690km, the most in the league.

"They only have one ever-present player - Caicedo - whereas most other teams have at least two-to-four ever-present players in their starting XI (this season)," says Stephen Smith, CEO and founder of Kitman Labs, the world’s leading sports performance intelligence company.

"Chelsea are focusing on rotating their starting XI from game to game, to try to counter-balance the elongation of last season and any residual effects from the Club World Cup. It’s certainly challenging for them, but they’ve showcased a smart approach so far and it shows the level of effort and detail being put in by their backroom and coaching staff.

"They’ll be taking a holistic approach and tracking a huge amount of data from the physical output of all of their players in games and in training."

While injury and fatigue issues have contributed to Chelsea picking up just one point in the Premier League in September, this is simply too unique a situation to predict how things will turn out. It may be useful to keep a watchful eye on PSG, though, as Luis Enrique's side also reached the Club World Cup final alongside Chelsea and have seen similar injury issues to key players so far this season.

"This is the first year that we’ve had the type of elongation we’ve seen from the Club World Cup in its new format, so we’ll have to wait and see how it shakes out," Smith says.

"Traditionally in the Premier League we see a higher number of injuries in the opening weeks because players are acclimatising back into the demands of the game. We generally see that reduce back to a “normal” level following the first three, four weeks of the season. Following that, historically, we have seen an increase in the number of injuries as we go through the winter schedule, presumably because of the amount of congestion during that period."