Team News: Terry And Cole Out, Lampard Doubt

Some sobering injury news out of Cobham today, with Roberto Di Matteo announcing in his pre-Wigan press conference the definite absence of John Terry and Ashley Cole from the squad that will face Wigan tomorrow.

The loss of John Terry is unsurprising considering the centre back is suffering an extremely painful injury, and we're lucky in that our next two games are against teams we can probably afford to leave Terry out. Hopefully the team won't make too much of a hash of things against Wigan*, which would allow Di Matteo the opportunity to rest him again against Fulham and give the captain can let his chest rest in anticipation of the two upcoming semi-finals

*We are Chelsea, so we will probably go on to be absolutely terrible defensively tomorrow

Di Matteo also confirmed the absence of Ashley Cole due to the left back rolling his ankle, although it's unclear whether this injury was obtained during the Benfica game or at training. Regardless, it's probably not the worst thing, as again Wigan aren't very good, so hopefully Ryan Bertrand will get a chance to make a much anticipated Premier League start. It's a great opportunity to see what Ryan can do against Premier League calibre sides (although defining Wigan as Premier League standard will probably be a lie by the end of the season), although there is also the option of playing either Bosingwa or Ferriera on the left flank, which would be...disappointing.

And the final news from the conference was the cloud over midfielder Frank Lampard, who has a ... you know, I don't even know what injury Lampard has. The most annoying thing about this is that Lampard is a viable option to replace Mata in the hole, and Lampard being ruled out makes it less likely that Juan will get the rest he needs.