Thiago Silva, Mason Mount, Raheem Sterling, Conor Gallagher return to Chelsea training as well

The 2022 World Cup is over, and despite all the reservations about it and controversies surrounding it, in terms of just the football, we had a fair bit of fun. International football is never the highest quality, but the tournament was certainly not short of entertainment and drama, culminating in one of the greatest, if not the greatest World Cup finals ever seen.

But now, just like when you return from a nice long vacation, the fun is over and we’re back to our dreary everydays. And I don’t just mean that it’s no longer a constant 75º F with 75% humidity.

Chelsea have been gearing up for the restart of our Premier League campaign as well, with the majority of players returning last week and four more rejoining this weekend, including Thiago Silva, Mason Mount, Raheem Sterling, and Conor Gallagher — following their eliminations at the quarterfinal stage with Brazil and England, respectively. The official website has a few photos of their first session back at Cobham (unfortunately they’re not part of the official Getty Images database).

So that means only Hakim Ziyech and Mateo Kovačić, who were both in action over the weekend still in the third-place match, are the only two players not back with the team. Presumably they will rejoin ahead of the match against AFC Bournemouth on December 27, though probably won’t yet be fit to fully partake.

Time to get to work!