Chelsea’s £20m mystery is about to get an answer the fans have been screaming for | OneFootball

Our predicted lineup for Tuesday night’s game against Arsenal had Carney Chukwuemeka starting. We knew Cole Palmer would be out, and we suspected Enzo Fernandez would be too, clearing space for Chukwuemeka in the starting lineup.

But he didn’t feature at all, deepening the mystery about what his status is.

To remind you of his injuries this season – he started the first two games of the season, coming off injured after 45 minutes of the second. That knee issue kept him out until mid-January. We finally saw a few cameos off the bench, then a new problem kept him out from the start of February until mid-March.

He looked to finally be back, coming off the bench to score against Leicester in the FA Cup, but since then he’s just had 3 further cameos.

He’s not been on the injury report for a while, so every passing week we expect him to make a return, but he never does. Tuesday night was his best chance yet, with so few alternative options available for Mauricio Pochettino. Yet we still didn’t see him.

Is he still carrying a mild aspect of his injury? If so, why is he getting minutes off the bench? Is he just not ready for 90 minutes? How can he have been making cameos since the 4th of April and still not be fit to play 60 minutes at least yet?

There are so many questions around what’s going on, but the news that Enzo Fernandez is going to get hernia surgery, ruling him out for the rest of the season, surely means we will soon get an answer. Chukwuemeka is perhaps the only player (theoretically) fit to replace the Argentine, so if we don’t see him in our next games, we’ll know something is very wrong.

One way or another, we will get an answer to this mystery.