Cole Palmer is a major doubt for Chelsea’s trip to Arsenal on Tuesday night.
The attacking midfielder, now joint-top scorer in the Premier League after last week’s four-goal haul against Everton, suffered an early knock in the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City having started the game with heavy strapping on his thigh.
While he completed the 90 minutes, Palmer missed training on Monday through illness with Mauricio Pochettino pessimistic over his chances of being involved at the Emirates.
Chelsea face further injury problems with full-backs Malo Gusto and Ben Chilwell also struggling with knocks.
Gusto, who has impressed in the absence of Reece James, has a knee problem with Chilwell struggling with an issue he has been carrying since the international break.
Both players are ‘under assessment’ ahead of the short trip to north London.
Christopher Nkunku, Lesley Ugochukwu and Robert Sanchez are back in partial team training after their layoffs with Levi Colwill still unavailable due to a troublesome toe injury that has ruled him out of the last seven games.
Wesley Fofana, Romeo Lavia and club captain James remain long-term absentees.
Should Palmer miss out, it will prompt a reshuffle in attack with Raheem Sterling and Mykhailo Mudryk pushing for starts alongside Noni Madueke and Nicolas Jackson.
Axel Disasi played the last 10 minutes against City at right-back having missed the win over Everton and is likely to slot into that role again should Gusto not make it.
Arsenal in comparison have a relatively clean bill of health as they look to keep the pressure on Manchester City having moved top again with Saturday’s win over Wolves.
Takehiro Tomiyasu missed that win after picking up a knock in the Champions League defeat to Bayern Munich last week. Jurrien Timber meanwhile is set to appear for the club’s Under-23 side with Mikel Arteta hopeful he can get some first-team minutes before the end of the season.
Arteta’s biggest dilemma is likely to come out on the left with decisions to be made over between Jakub Kiwior and Oleksandr Zinchenko at the back and Leandro Trossard and Gabriel Martinelli in attack.
Arsenal predicted XI vs Chelsea: Raya; White, Saliba, Gabriel, Kiwior, Odegaard, Jorginho, Rice, Saka, Jesus, Martinelli
Chelsea predicted XI vs Arsenal: Petrovic, Disasi, Thiago Silva, Chalobah, Cucurella, Caicedo, Fernandez, Gallagher, Sterling, Madueke, Jackson.
Arsenal vs Chelsea kick-off time and TV channel
The London derby is scheduled to kick off at 8pm [BST] on Tuesday 23 April. The match will be broadcast live on TNT Sports 1.
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