Chelsea boss Frank Lampard confirmed that Fikayo Tomori is not ready to return and that an Achilles issue has sidelined Mateo Kovacic.
Frank Lampard revealed that Mateo Kovacic would miss Chelsea’s next two games with an Achilles injury against West Ham. In the 53rd minute of Chelsea’s 3-2 loss, Croatia’s international Kovacic went off to battle West Ham on Wednesday at London Stadium.
The loss was a blow to Chelsea’s hopes to secure qualifying for the Champions League, and Lampard announced they’ll be without Kovacic as they’re trying to get back on track at Stamford Bridge against Watford on Saturday. Fikayo Tomori will also be away as he continues recovering from a muscle injury.
“Fikayo is still not well. Hopefully, by next week, he can work with us somewhere. He’s doing a lot of work. It is just the last bit to get him on the little tough exercise pitch. Kovacic’s going to be out, he wounded his Achilles during the game of West Ham, and he’s going to miss this one and even the one after. The aftermath probably won’t be too long.”
Pundit Gary Neville criticize Marcos Alonso
Marcos Alonso was highly criticized by Sky Sports pundit Gary Neville during the coverage of the game for failing to check back on winner Andriy Yarmolenko for 89th-minute.
While Lampard agreed that the left-back should have done better, he had not discussed the incident with Alonso.
Lampard said: “It isn’t important with isolated ‘slatings’ – it’s much easier to comment from afar. We ‘re trying to play football, we ‘re trying to be positive but, we don’t want to concede. Recovery runs are a big part of soccer, and if it’s the first or 90th minutes, the players have to do it. I don’t think it’s fair enough to look at Marcos.
In that isolated incident, he can recover better, and we can recover better as a team. So it’s got to be important for the team. You have to run back just as often as you are running fast forward and back to be able to take hard runs to help the team. This year I can not talk to the team about that. If you’re isolating one goal, it’s so important because it’s winning the points. But I know with my players, it always wants to push off the ball very well because it’s going beyond us when we’re recovering. We messed up in a game and, it’s not just that mistake, other errors were made, and we lost the game.”
He added: “I didn’t talk to him about it. I think talking to any pundit is a risky game because you’d have to talk to all your players every week and, that’s the nature of the beast. If I felt that a player needed help or support in those situations I would do. We as players and myself are probably the biggest self-critics in my job, we ‘re analyzing games, we ‘re going over them and talking to an individual and collective players, and that’s my main focus, not what so much comes from outside.”
