Chelsea to assess Diego Costa injury on Friday

Good news and bad news regarding the Diego Costa injury, dear readers. First, the bad: The Telegraph are agreeing with the Sun that the striker, scorer of two in two to start his Chelsea career, is suffering from a hamstring problem. This shouldn't really surprise anyone, since if there was any knock on Costa before we signed him it was that he was coming off the tail end of a season in which he was more than a little bit beaten up.

The good news is that they disagree with the Sun on the amount of time Costa is set to miss. While the initial report said between four and six weeks, which would have been calamitous since our alternative options at striker are a 36-year-old and a man we're currently trying to pay to go away, the Telegraph are saying that Chelsea still don't know that he'll miss the trip to Everton and that they'll be assessing him ahead of training on Friday. That takes the threat level down from 'oh no, Diego Costa has torn his hamstring' to 'Diego Costa has a minor hamstring tweak', which is obviously a much happier place.

I'd assume that given Costa's recent injury history, if there's even the slightest doubt as to whether he'll be 100 percent for the Everton match he'll be held out of action, but there's probably no chance that this ends up being a long-term issue.