Chelsea injury news: No Eden Hazard, no…problem?
Chelsea will be without star winger Eden Hazard for their clash with Sunderland. How can Antonio Conte’s men cope with the injury blow?
Sure Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland are separated by a couple hundred miles but that won’t stop the #narrative around Antonio Conte’s first crack at doing it on a cold, rainy Wednesday night against stubborn, lower-tier competition. In Chelsea’s favor at the moment is that the forecast does not call for rain during the match.
What will be most problematic for the shouty and aggressive-hugging Italian is the loss of Eden Hazard and his magic.
Thanks to Tony Pulis’ evil ways and West Brom having enough success to believe in them, Hazard is still feeling the effects of a kick suffered in the first twenty minutes versus the Baggies. The tiny Belgian tank lasted until the 79th minute when he was subbed off for Branislav Ivanovic as Conte looked to close up shop and secure the three points, but the knock seems to have lingered.
What’s yet unknown is the extent of the damage. One assumes that Hazard would power through if this were an important Champions League match (miss those) rather than the mid-week fixture of a 10-day long three-game stint. At the moment that’s the hope anyway; especially since the alternative is a thin squad getting even thinner – and far less creative – ahead of a condensed string of matches.
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More immediate is figuring out how Conte will cope with the absence of his best playmaker and most talented dribbler. The good news is that Sunderland aren’t a particularly good team, as their position in the table suggests.
The bad news is that short rest, travel, and an expected two defensive banks of four could serve as formidable obstacles in front of a team without its most magical player.
In the West Brom match we saw that Antonio Conte isn’t afraid to change the shape of the team multiple times. In fact, the best attribute Conte possesses is his ability to place his players in positions that prompt their success.
It’s how Chelsea “stumbled” into the 3-4-3, which was only a stumble in the same way the Wright brothers fell off a cliff in a flying machine that was years in the making.
But whether it’s a simple insertion of Willian that replaces Hazard, a 3-5-2, or any combination of formations Conte used against West Brom, as always, it will be up to the players. In spite of Conte’s shuffling it took Diego Costa doing something special to get the win. The deficit of a player known for creating something out of nothing increases the burden on each of his colleagues.
Still, the variance in quality between the two sides should offer chances to a number of Chelsea players to be the day’s hero ahead of anyone in red and white. However, football is rarely that predictable, and a team nicknamed after a feared symbol of superstition might already have the advantage of hope. Heal up Eden.