Chelsea have not been the same since the injuries to Ben Chilwell and Reece James, with the former tearing his ACL and undergoing surgery at the end of the year and the latter currently out two months with a hamstring strain. Without our first-choice wing-backs, we have looked far less dynamic, threatening, or solid on and off the ball, and our results have suffered for it.
But there’s some good news to brighten your day, with both players back in the building and working hard on their recoveries. Of course, it’ll be some time before they’re both back, especially Chilwell, but it’s still great to see:
Both players posted the same picture on their Instagram; James captioning it with “fullback gang on the mend” and Chilwell with a simple “working!”. In terms of deep and meaningful emojis, we also have an hourglass and robot face in James’ caption because, you know, he’s a machine, while Chilwell’s emoji of choice is the charged battery as presumably he’s full of energy and raring to go.
Earlier today, head coach Thomas Tuchel revealed that James was back doing some individual drills, but that it was still too soon to put a specific timeframe for his return. We have been expecting him to be out about two months with the injury, which would see him return sometime in early to mid-March.
Chilwell meanwhile is just three weeks removed from ACL surgery, so him being back in the building without any bandages and already working hard on his rehab is a promising sign. The types of modern, advanced, and full-time resources that should be available to him for dealing with and recovering from this injury are impressive indeed — he probably won’t be like me, 2.5 years after the fact still having to deal with tightness and swelling and a relative strength difference between left and right sides.
Good luck, Chilly! (And Reecey!)
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