Nine key Chelsea players could miss Burnley with Cole Palmer and Enzo Fernandez update

There is a small but possible chance that an entire XI of Chelsea players will miss the Premier League clash against Burnley on Saturday. Despite the two-week international break offering a chance for some to get back to fitness, Mauricio Pochettino has so far seen it have the opposite effect.

He is now preparing to take on Vincent Kompany's relegation-bound side without a key core of players. The mitigation here is that most of them have been unavailable, or far from their sharpest, all season.

Two players won't feature again this season. Wesley Fofana is yet to be confirmed as out, but Pochettino has revealed his own doubts about the Frenchman being back in action. Romeo Lavia will end up only playing 32 minutes more than Fofana.

«Midfielder Romeo Lavia is to unfortunately miss the remainder of our 2023-24 campaign following a setback in his recovery,» a statement from the club read on Wednesday. «Recent medical assessments have confirmed that Lavia, who sustained a significant thigh injury against Crystal Palace back in December, will not feature again this season.»

Pochettino himself opened up on the struggles for Lavia this season. «It's a really difficult situation for him, of course,» he said on Thursday. «He is sad, he is not happy because he only played 30 minutes. For a new player arriving at the club, it's a thing that sometimes happen in football. When the club signed him, he arrived with problems from Southampton.

»If you remember, he cannot train with us in the first months. And then, when he started to be ready to prepare, he suffered a problem in his feet. Then, when he recovered, he played only 30 minutes, got injured, and from December, we didn't have the possibility to train with him. He was never available