Morata hints at return to training, but fresh Chelsea concerns over Kanté emerge

We continue to await with baited breath any news on the hamstring injuries suffered by Álvaro Morata and N’Golo Kanté, but so far Chelsea have been customarily tight-lipped. Though in fairness, Kanté just got back to the club yesterday (Wednesday), so at least there’s some excuse for the Blues there. That said, Conte is never the most forthcoming with information and of course the club are under no obligation to release any information (unlike, say, teams in the NFL do), so we’re left grasping in the dark and looking for any hints.

To underline that paradigm, Morata has now had to delete two Instagram posts that appeared to provide some information about his status. Allowing for the possibility that there is a benign reason for this (scheduled posts? PR firm oopsies?), it’s a bit odd that Morata has had to do this twice now. The first one he reposted later without the indication that he’s working to return in time for Saturday’s game. The second one remains lost to the ether, but of course the Internet never forgets.

The caption reads “coffee before training”. Obviously that could be just light training or fitness work (just like the live video he posted of himself on an exercise bike a couple days ago), but it’s good news if we are to believe the recent reports that Chelsea are hoping to have him back for the match against Roma coming up on Wednesday. That would put his recovery at around 2.5 weeks, or roughly half the time than the initial injury diagnosis from Spain indicated.

Trending in the opposite direction is the prognosis on N’Golo Kanté. Reports of the tests France conducted on the midfielder claim “up to three weeks”, which given Chelsea’s fixture list, would basically rule him out until after the next international break. The Telegraph were running with a similar story late yesterday, expecting Kanté to miss the rest of October — Chelsea’s seventh game of this latest 7-games-in-21, days stretch, the home tie against Manchester United, is technically in November.