The big team news question we all wanted to hear an answer to in today’s Xabi Alonso press conference was about Moises Caicedo.
If you enjoy Talk Chelsea coverage and want to see more of it, add us as a preferred source on Google to make us a favourite and see more of our content.
Xabi Alonso was asked about the fitness of key midfielder Moises Caicedo in today’s press conference previewing Sunday’s game against Arsenal, and tried to give as little away as possible.
“We’ll check tomorrow,” he said of the Ecuador star who limped off last weekend against Brighton just 11 minutes after coming on as a sub. There was no indication of whether Caicedo had trained today, or indeed had trained at all this week.
A second mention later in the press conference saw Alonso saying he wasn’t worried, and again reiterating that a final decision would be made tomorrow after the last training session the team have together.
Caicedo still feels likely to miss Arsenal game
What we take from that is that, actually, Caicedo almost certainly is out, and Alonso is just trying to keep Arsenal guessing by not conforming that. We could be wrong, but the sense we got from how Caicedo looked coming off on Sunday was that he’d be missing this game at the very least.
He may be close to a return, but after bringing him back too early once, the club will surely be really cautious now, even with such a big game to play.
In other news…
Alonso had some special tricks in training this week – he got his players to use rugby tackle bags to prepare for Arsenal’s set pieces.
Talk of Chelsea interest in a former Liverpool midfielder has come to nothing after all, according to club sources.
