{"id":3629,"date":"2026-05-04T01:44:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:44:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=3629"},"modified":"2026-05-04T01:44:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T01:44:12","slug":"chelsea-receive-double-injury-boost-ahead-of-nottingham-forest-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/?p=3629","title":{"rendered":"Chelsea receive double injury boost ahead of Nottingham Forest game"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"td-post-featured-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-lazyloaded=\"1\" width=\"696\" height=\"392\" class=\"entry-thumb td-modal-image\" src=\"https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-696x392.webp\" srcset=\"https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-696x392.webp 696w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-300x169.webp 300w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-1024x576.webp 1024w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-768x432.webp 768w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-747x420.webp 747w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-150x84.webp 150w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash-1068x601.webp 1068w, https:\/\/scorzo.live\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Injury-boost-for-Chelsea-ahead-of-Nottingham-clash.webp 1200w\" data-sizes=\"(max-width: 696px) 100vw, 696px\" alt=\"Chelsea\" title=\"Injury boost for Chelsea ahead of Nottingham clash\"\/><\/div>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Chelsea receive good news ahead of the game against Nottingham Forest<\/h2>\n<p>Chelsea fans got some much-needed good news on Friday. Interim head coach Calum McFarlane confirmed that Reece James and Levi Colwill are back in full team training before Monday\u2019s Premier League clash with Nottingham Forest at Stamford Bridge. Speaking at Cobham during his pre-match press conference, McFarlane was hopeful but careful, making it clear that neither player will be rushed back before they are 100% fit.<\/p>\n<p>Colwill has been out since pre-season with a knee injury, a long and frustrating stint on the treatment table,\u00a0and only recently sharpened his match fitness with the Under-21s. James has also been out for the last few weeks with a hamstring issue.<\/p>\n<p>McFarlane told reporters, \u201cBoth are looking good, which is really positive.\u201d He suggested they might make the squad for the Forest game, though the medical staff will monitor them over the next few sessions and take it day by day. This update comes directly from Chelsea\u2019s official press briefing at Cobham on Friday, 2 May 2025.<\/p>\n<p>Three Ideal Candidates to become next Chelsea boss<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Does Chelsea\u2019s injury crisis actually reveal a dangerous squad depth problem?<\/h3>\n<p>While Chelsea will be relieved to have them back, this situation highlights a worrying trend. The club rely so much on James\u2019s leadership that his absence clearly rattled the right-back position for weeks. <\/p>\n<p>James is still world-class going forward and holds a lot of sway in the dressing room. McFarlane even described him as a \u201cmassive support.\u201d However, his track record is hard to ignore; constant injuries keep sidelining Chelsea\u2019s best defender right when they need him most.<\/p>\n<p>Colwill also looked incredibly promising before his knee gave out, offering a level of composure and passing that most of Chelsea\u2019s other centre-backs just don\u2019t have. But the bigger issue is that losing two academy products at the same time almost tanked the entire defence.<\/p>\n<p>Three Major reasons behind Chelsea\u2019s poor season<\/p>\n<p>It points to some poor planning in how the squad was built. The upcoming transfer window will show if Chelsea plan to actually fix these cracks or if they will just throw money at more imbalanced signings. Chelsea can\u2019t have another year where their potential is limited by the physio room rather than their talent on the pitch.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"\/><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chelsea receive good news ahead of the game against Nottingham Forest Chelsea fans got some&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chelsea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}