call a shaman doctor to lift this f**king curse cloud looming over our club for years now

2 hours ago, Sconnie Blue said:

2 months. 
 

Not terrible. 

For a player like Nkunku, it is. 2 months out is more like 3 because he will need time to get back to his best. We won't see him until late October at the earliest, but I suspect it will be November. This is a massive blow, we can't afford big injuries if we want to make top 4.

Not good news. Any knee injury is also a recipe for instability in other areas if rushed back to playing, such as hamstrings etc. Agree with @Scott Harris that this is most likely him out until November.

Until we have an official statement from the club you could pretty well get a range of weeks to months from Twitter. From example there is this one from a fairly decent source:

 

This must ultimatedly end up the longest wait between knowing a player was joining (the first team squad) to seeing their official debut.

Previous records of my top of my head were Robben and Ziyech who put pen to paper in February but didn't see the pitch until October (felt so much longer in Ziyech's case for obvious reason's).

So it’s either weeks vs months from two pretty reputable blokes. 
 

Now we wait. 

28 minutes ago, Argo said:

This must ultimatedly end up the longest wait between knowing a player was joining (the first team squad) to seeing their official debut.

Previous records of my top of my head were Robben and Ziyech who put pen to paper in February but didn't see the pitch until October (felt so much longer in Ziyech's case for obvious reason's).

Kendry Paez will blow all of them out of the water LOL.

 

Seriously f**k off. Another season dampened. 
 

 

Now we need a bit more up front. Cant rely on what we have with Nkunku out. This reinforces my rule that the first thing we should get is a medical team that is better than everyone else's medical team. Time after time we are getting taken for a ride buying players that soon after are injured.

I would wager that in the vast majority of cases the injury record was pre existing and we just didn't give enough weight to it. Obvious examples include Wesley Fofana clearly the stupidest buy, Nkunku who spent half the previous season injured, maybe more. It goes on.

In my opinion it's not overpaying for good players that we should worry about its buying "bills of goods" in the form of damaged players. Sack the medical staff or put them  on a large performance bonus related to using their judgement.

3 hours ago, Snedger said:

Great start to the season. The best player and only one actually out of diapers we’ve signed and he’s gonna miss a chunk of the season. And a knee injury. Notoriously difficult to get over.

We better sign someone, Vlahovic probably, or we’ll likely be trailing the other fourth place chasers before we even reach October.

Losing Nkunku for months and signing Vlahovic will just be weird and so Chelsea I can see it happening. I don’t think making panic signings who don’t fit in the long term scheme of things would be helpful, Pochettino just has to be clever and tweak a few things. 
Maybe switching from his favoured 4-2-3-1 to a 4-3-3, because I don’t think Chukwuemeka and Maatsen have enough to cover in his absence. It opens an avenue for keeping Angelo till Jan to provide cover on the RW, and if does well he can earn a loan move to a PL club in the Jan window. The 6 in the middle would then be 2 new Midfielders, Enzo, Chukwuemeka, Santos and Maatsen. We could then buy Kudus to compete with Jackson if we intend to loan out Broja and also play in one of the midfield roles. We can then agree a Jan move for Olise after he has fully recovered from his injury and ideally loan out Angelo to them till the summer.

I just can't see how it's going to be possible to get back to the top end of the table any time soon, and with how we are spending money, it's not something we can miss out on. Getting one injury is bad enough, but we just can't seem to avoid picking up more and more and more. It never ends, it just piles on top and ruins every season. No doubt James will pick up another serious injury soon after the season starts.

1 hour ago, ozboy said:

I would wager that in the vast majority of cases the injury record was pre existing and we just didn't give enough weight to it. Obvious examples include Wesley Fofana clearly the stupidest buy, Nkunku who spent half the previous season injured, maybe more. It goes on.

In my opinion it's not overpaying for good players that we should worry about its buying "bills of goods" in the form of damaged players. Sack the medical staff or put them  on a large performance bonus related to using their judgement.

We also have a squad largely composed of young players (<23) and older players (30+) i.e our squad is composed of players who are in their most injury-vulnerable years. I wouldn't blame the current medical staff, I certainly wouldn't blame the previous ones either, but there is an issue with our squad composition and has been for some years now.

Add to that the above, a historical "win-now" mentality that sees players and managers rush back players, and various coaching and fitness methologies since 2017, and you have a diabolical set of factors that interact to fuel the injury dumpster-fire we find ourselves with.

Edited August 8, 20232 yr by SydneyChelsea

If the worst happens I hope we react sensibly vs do something over reactive. 

37 minutes ago, SydneyChelsea said:

We also have a squad largely composed of young players (<23) and older players (30+) i.e our squad is composed of players who are in their most injury-vulnerable years. I wouldn't blame the current medical staff, I certainly wouldn't blame the previous ones either, but there is an issue with our squad composition and has been for some years now.

Add to that the above, a historical "win-now" mentality that sees players and managers rush back players, and various coaching and fitness methologies since 2017, and you have a diabolical set of factors that interact to fuel the injury dumpster-fire we find 

The injury record at Chelsea is pretty deflating.  Hard to get any momentum.

Oh well, on we go then.  Time for others to step up and make the most of what we have.  Its a long season and hopefully Nkunku recovers quickly.

That may be true but does not excuse fofana, nkunku or for that matter Badiashile who had two prior significant  hammy injuries. 
I don’t know what the answer is but I want a big big discount for a poor injury history. 

If he is out 2-3 months he Will miss 8-10 Prem games + any cup games we have during that period. 1/4 of the entire season. 

Is that for real, he's out for months before the season even starts, was that resulted from the injury from playing on 'sand' in the last US tour game? He's one player I really look forward to see, be a devastating below to our early season if he's out for that long.

This is crazy .. and the club again needs to take blame .. playing on that pitch was a horrendous decision.. can we stop playing on dirt bags.. we lost two promising players to these and now nkunku .. this is crazy .. 

5 hours ago, Scott Harris said:

I just can't see how it's going to be possible to get back to the top end of the table any time soon, and with how we are spending money, it's not something we can miss out on. Getting one injury is bad enough, but we just can't seem to avoid picking up more and more and more. It never ends, it just piles on top and ruins every season. No doubt James will pick up another serious injury soon after the season starts.

When you have Reece James, Chilwell, Fofana, Kante, Pulisic, Ziyech and Kovacic in your squad you can`t really expect anything else. To be fair, some of the most injury prone players are gone now but it remains to be seen how reliable the new signings are. Nkunku was injured for large parts of last season already. Certainly not a good sign.

Badiashile also had 3 hamstring injuries in his relatively short career so far. Not looking good for him either to be honest.

Malo Gusto has missed large parts (or even the majority) of last season with injuries.

 

 

 

Reading some reactions, I’m wondering why we bought him in the first place. If the manager can simply change from his favoured system and others can just step up, did we ever need him anyway?

Surgery on miniscus damage will mean his season is a write-off in real terms. I think we desperately need a replacement at any cost. And not another 19 year old from the French third division!

1 hour ago, Jangz said:

This is crazy .. and the club again needs to take blame .. playing on that pitch was a horrendous decision.. can we stop playing on dirt bags.. we lost two promising players to these and now nkunku .. this is crazy .. 

He was injured by a heavy tackle from Hummels - not the pitch.

15 minutes ago, Snedger said:

Reading some reactions, I’m wondering why we bought him in the first place. If the manager can simply change from his favoured system and others can just step up, did we ever need him anyway?

Surgery on miniscus damage will mean his season is a write-off in real terms. I think we desperately need a replacement at any cost. And not another 19 year old from the French third division!

No need for Nkunku! We still have the one whose name shall not be mentioned on the books for next season! I am sure he will step in and do a great job and to be honest his name kind of sounds similar as well. Just have to replace the N with the L and we are almost good to go.

Mykky Mudryk can play centrally too - sorted. Chukky and our new AM Ian Maatsen for backup. 

1 minute ago, Gordon Bennett said:

Mykky Mudryk can play centrally too - sorted. Chukky and our new AM Ian Maatsen for backup. 

My god, when you put it like that, we really are mid table material now aren’t we. Or just a glorified academy side.