Liam Delap is facing one other spell on the sidelines but Chelsea might be hopeful of getting their striker available again early within the Recent 12 months.
The previous Ipswich Town star began against Bournemouth last Saturday, fighting tooth and nail with Cherries defender Marcos Senesi until injury struck.
After one feisty exchange between the 2, Senesi landed awkwardly on Delap leaving the striker in real pain. The 22-year-old was left clutching his right shoulder as he left the pitch after 31 minutes, replaced by Marc Guiu.
It’s the second time Delap has been sidelined since his switch from Ipswich Town. The striker missed 10 games with a hamstring injury earlier within the campaign, starting 4 of Chelsea’s five Premier League matches since his return having also served a suspension.
His absence leaves Chelsea short up top with Joao Pedro, with no goal in his last five games, and Guiu now Maresca’s alternative options.
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Delap will miss an important run of games over the festive period but Stephen Smith, CEO and founding father of Kitman Labs which specialises in injury welfare, suggests an injury reminiscent of his shouldn’t be considered a long-term blow.
‘It’s difficult to find out the severity without being to evaluate it. But we are able to hypnotise it’s an AC (acromioclavicular) injury based on the way it happened,’ Smith told Metro.
‘He landed down heavily, his arm was down underneath him and he was compressed as the opposite player got here down on him. So it’s almost certainly an AC sprain. It doesn’t seem like anything broken.
‘Typically if it’s a gentle sprain it’s every week to 2 weeks. Whether it is a grade 2 it may possibly be three to 6 weeks and whether it is worse than that, a grade three, you possibly can be six to 12 weeks. Most up-to-date research on UEFA athletes showed the common time loss to be a month on average.’
Delap is one of the crucial robust strikers within the English top flight, offering the physicality up front that is usually lacking when Joao Pedro leads the road for Chelsea.
While his absence shall be a blow, Chelsea can have no concerns of Delap having to curb a few of that fight when he returns to motion.
‘Of all of the kinds of injuries that may occur, this might be on the spectrum of the things teams are least concerned about when a player returns, in comparison with if it was a knee, an ankle, hamstring, a calf or the rest,’ Smith said. ‘They shall be taking care of it, however it won’t be a giant concern.
‘They may still be doing plenty of treatment on it, it remains to be a ligament issue. So if it gets overstretched or he gets one other belt on it while he’s going through the rehab process it could set it back.
‘In order that they shall be doing plenty of con-contact work with him, but he’ll still find a way to do a tonne of ball work with him and fitness work so it’s something they need to find a way to administer.’
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