{"id":662123,"date":"2025-12-08T08:46:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:46:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/?p=662123"},"modified":"2025-12-08T08:49:30","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T13:49:30","slug":"chelsea-starters-ruled-out-atalanta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/2025\/12\/08\/chelsea-starters-ruled-out-atalanta\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Chelsea Starters Reportedly Ruled Out of Atalanta Clash"},"content":{"rendered":"

With fixtures piling up Enzo Maresca has his work cut out for him to rotate his squad to compete on all fronts. With fitness already something to keep in mind, he will now have to deal with some new problems as different reports indicate that two of the starters from the 0-0 draw with Bournemouth are unavailable for the midweek tie with Atalanta in the UEFA Champions League.<\/p>\n

Two Chelsea Starters to Miss Atalanta Fixture<\/h2>\n

Liam Delap<\/h3>\n

One of the more obvious ones, the former Ipswich Town man went off against the Cherries and was next seen with his arm in a sling following a bad fall on his shoulder. According to a report from Alex Crook<\/a>, the Blues might be without the striker for as many as eight weeks, with six weeks expected to be the minimum recovery time for the Englishman.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0<\/strong>Chelsea vs Bournemouth Confirmed Lineups for December 6<\/a><\/p>\n

This will put some further pressure on the team’s attackers to score, with Joao Pedro being one of the few central attackers fit to play regularly. The onus will now fall on him and Marc Guiu to fill the number nine spot over a busy December\/January run.<\/p>\n

*turn over to page 2 for the next name ruled out*<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Cole Palmer<\/h3>\n

In potentially worse news, Nizaar Kinsella has reported<\/a> that Cole Palmer hasn’t trained ahead of the clash with Atalanta. While it is noted that this was a planned part of his recovery and that he is expected to be fit to face Everton, it is another blow to the team’s attack as they will face a very game Serie A side with the top of the League Phase table in the sights of both sides.<\/p>\n

Read More:\u00a0<\/strong>Best Chelsea Players to Wear the Number 14 Jersey Ever<\/a><\/p>\n

With Enzo Fernandez particularly running on fumes, he would ideally be rested in this one, but that would put the entire burden of creating on some of the wingers with Palmer out. It will be interesting to see how Maresca can navigate this one as his squad is getting stretched very thin at the moment.<\/p>\n

Featured Image Credits<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Chelsea
IMAGO \/ Gribaudi\/ImagePhoto
Db New York Stati Uniti 08\/07\/2025 – FIFA Club World Cup 2025 \/ Fluminense-Chelsea \/ foto Daniele Buffa\/Image nella foto: Enzo Maresca PUBLICATIONxNOTxINxITA<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With fixtures piling up Enzo Maresca has his work cut out for him to rotate his squad to compete on all fronts. With fitness already something to keep in mind, he will now have to deal with some new problems as different reports indicate that two of the starters from the 0-0 draw with Bournemouth […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2013,"featured_media":656878,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[11,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-662123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea","category-news"],"modified_by":"Alex Richards, LWOF Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662123"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662123\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":662125,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662123\/revisions\/662125"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}