Good news on Eden Hazard's hip injury

The foul by Jamie Vardy was, by my estimation, roughly the 600,001st foul Eden Hazard had received in his three seasons and change in English football.  Like the majority of the ones that had come before, this one, too, was not called by the referee.  Still, by some minor acts of miracles, Hazard had largely escaped the previous 600,000 without any injuries.  This time, he was not so lucky.

While never officially confirmed, we've basically sussed this out to be a hip pointer, a fairly uncommon injury in (non-gridiron) football but nonetheless a surprisingly painful one.  Hazard had also figured out pretty quickly that he wouldn't be able to continue against Leicester after receiving the kick, and he would go on to miss the rest of that week's training as well.

Fortunately, after missing the Sunderland win on Saturday, there's good news on the horizon!

Eden Hazard is set to return against Watford on Saturday after a hip injury and is bracing himself to be the next target for abuse from the fans.

-source: Evening Standard

The Evening Standard's Simon Johnson suggests that Hazard might be the next target of the Stamford Bridge boo-birds, for his perceived lack of dedication and effort.  But even if that proves to be true, Chelsea are usually a much better team with Hazard in it than out of it, and we'll need our Player of the Year to find his previous seasons' form as soon as possible.  So he needs to play, if he's able, and like other targets of ire like Fabregas or Costa, just needs to work through it and come back out the other side the hero that we need once again.