Chelsea’s star attacker sidelined due to undisclosed issues for tomorrow’s match

Mauricio Pochettino is taking his pre match press conference, and as we’ve come to expect, there’s bad injury news all round.

The headline is Cristopher Nkunku. After missing the whole season after signing, he’s just got back into the team. But Pochettino says the attacker has had “issues” this week and will not be starting tomorrow in the FA Cup against Preston.

We pray that those issues are illness or blisters or something unrelated to the serious knee problem that kept him out until just a few weeks ago.

Either way, the fact that he’s going to be on the bench is promising – we would have expected him to be rested for his game even without these mystery issues, as the club try to gently work him up to 100% fitness.

Let’s pray we build up a comfortable lead and don’t need to rely on him as a sub – there are plenty of young players who will be keen to hoover up those minutes instead.