Three Chelsea players test positive for COVID-19, Everton match still to go ahead

Chelsea’s match against Everton tonight was in doubt for a few hours after it had emerged that three players tested positive for COVID-19 (last night), but after retesting the rest of the squad this afternoon and discovering no new positives, the match remains very much on.

It’s unclear right now who the three players are who tested positive, but that mystery should be solved fairly quickly once lineups and matchday squads are announced. Ben Chilwell and Mateo Kovacic were expected to be the only players not available today, with the latter finishing up his own 10-day isolation period this week.

All Premier League teams have recently begun daily testing, which in theory should prevent major outbreaks by quickly isolating positive cases from negative. Vaccinated players can also avoid a quarantine despite close contacts in that case as well.

If Chelsea can contain the spread to the current numbers, we should be able to avoid having any fixtures postponed — unless of course we see a situation like at Brentford, where they have over a dozen positives at the moment and have asked for the postponement of our League Cup quarterfinal matchup next Wednesday.