Medical expert: Christensen facing ‘weeks’ out after Chelsea ‘disaster’
Andreas Christensen has been carrying a back injury at Chelsea for the best part of a month and may be in need of several weeks rest.
That is the view of injury expert Ben Dinnery, who runs the Premier Injuries site and has a background in medicine and data analysis.
Christensen missed the game against Wolves last month (19 December) but returned as a second-half substitute in the 3-1 Boxing Day win over Aston Villa.
The 25-year-old centre-back then started against Brighton last Wednesday (29 December) but was forced to withdraw at half-time.
Per the Evening Standard last Thursday (30 December), Thomas Tuchel confirmed Christensen’s back issue, which he described as a “disaster”.
Chelsea were struggling to field a full matchday squad at the time, but a handful of stars have now returned from injury.
Dinnery predicts that the Dane may be afforded some time to rehabilitate now the Blues’ crisis has abated somewhat.
“We don’t have any details on the specifics of the injury itself,” he told Football Insider‘s Adam Williams.
“We know he has been handling this since early December. Under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have been involved.
“Thomas Tuchel has been banging the drum about players being pushed to the limit with the fixture schedule.
“The absences of Thiago Silva, Ben Chilwell, Reece James, all of those have broken up the structure of the squad a little bit.
“It has forced managers to play players who aren’t 100 per cent.
“He was getting a little bit of treatment prior to his return but he couldn’t see out that game. It’s something that needs to be addressed.
“It probably isn’t too serious. We have seen that with Jorginho, who has spent a lot of time in the treatment room to manage that pain.
“Now some players have come back, maybe there’s an opportunity to rest Christensen.
“Maybe it will be a couple of weeks where they can get him back to some semblance of what he’s like at optimum levels.”
Christensen has scored once and provided one assist in 19 appearances this term.
Chelsea take on League Two Chesterfield in the FA Cup tomorrow (8 January).
In other news, Dinnery fears Timo Werner could suffer “long Covid” for “seven weeks” after Chelsea news.