The Michael Essien knee injury first mentioned by Jody Morris on Twitter has been confirmed by Chelsea, and it doesn't sound great. Here's the official statement:
Michael Essien suffered an injury to his right knee during training this week.
He will undergo tests over the next few days to determine the extent of that injury. Until we have the full results of those tests we will not be commenting further.
That they don't know the extent of the injury yet implies that there's some major swelling going on, from which it's not a difficult step to assume that there is indeed cruciate ligament damage. Several papers are already running with the idea that this could be season-ending (and thus potentially career ending, given Essien's history and age), but we won't know that until the tests come back. What we can be pretty sure of, however, is that his preseason is now in major doubt, and it shouldn't surprise anyone should this injury impact the first few months of the 2011/12 campaign. This is bad, bad news, and all we can hope for is that it's sub-pessimal bad news.
This really sucks. Essien was for years my favourite player, the man I considered the best footballer on the team and one of the best on the planet. Seeing him suffer injury after injury is just awful. Ugh.