Cole Palmer in Chelsea warmups. (Photo by Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)

Enzo Maresca’s worrying injury update over key player for tomorrow

Originally posted on Chelsea News | Last updated Sep 12, 2025 7:09 AM ET

After a long, boring international break, we’re almost there. Enzo Maresca has just taken his press conference ahead of Saturday night’s return to action in the Premier League for Chelsea against Brentford.

The first question, as you might imagine, was about Cole Palmer. The team’s creative star has a groin problem and has missed the last two games, as well as international duty with England.

Some footage emerged in the last 24 hours of him training with the group at Cobham however, so hopes were raised about Saturday. But Maresca’s update was not as positive as we might have hoped.

Maresca plays down Palmer’s starting chances

“Cole took part of the session yesterday for the first time, not the entire session. Today in the afternoon we have one more session, we’re going to try with him, if he’s okay, otherwise he will be out tomorrow again,” Maresca said.

We really can’t see Palmer being thrown into the game from the start if he’s not trained fully. It’s risk we really can’t afford to take with Bayern Munich coming up in the Champions League next week. Palmer will likely be on the bench at best, with Chelsea hoping that bright spark Estevao Willian can get the job done against a stiff Brentford defence.

Palmer’s issue not chronic says manager

Palmer’s ongoing issue have led some to believe this is some kind of chronic problem which the club are looking to manage, but Maresca pretty flatly denies that:

“No, no, it was an injury [not managing his fitness], he’s recovering from the injury so it’s not managing him, it’s just recovery from the injury. For sure in the moment that he’s available we also probably need to think to manage him to be in because of the amount of games.”

Hmm. We hope that’s true.

This article first appeared on Chelsea News and was syndicated with permission.

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