What Chelsea matches Wesley Fofana will miss due to concussion symptoms
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Chelsea defender Wesley Fofana is set to miss the next three games after suffering a concussion in Tuesday's Carabao Cup win over Lincoln City.
Blues head coach Enzo Maresca has ruled the France international out of contention for Saturday's Premier League home match against Brighton, alongside Tosin Adarabioyo and Cole Palmer.
Unfortunately, Maresca did not give out much details about Fofana's situation in the press conference.
According to Kieran Gill of the Daily Mail, however, Fofana will have to skip the next 12 days. This rules him out of the upcoming big matches against Benfica and Liverpool next week as well.
This comes at such an unfortunate time for Fofana, who has just recently returned from a long-term hamstring injury.
He has just started finding his groove after a long period off the pitch, and his presence has proved crucial amid Levi Colwill's injury absence.
On a more positive note, this opens up even more opportunities for young centre-back Josh Acheampong.
Acheampong has only made one appearance for Chelsea this season, in the Premier League opener against Crystal Palace that ended 0-0, although he would have likely played against Lincoln if he had not been ill.
On the youngster, Maresca said: "I already showed trust and confidence on Josh Acheampong last year when he played games in the Premier League.
"Because last year if you remember when we played Josh Acheampong against Palace, at home against Bournemouth, the reason why was not because we didn't have any central defenders.
"I think Tosin was available, Benoit was available. We trust Josh, not because of the injury situation, so nothing changed with Josh. We trust Josh 100 per cent. He was ill this week, he had the first session yesterday with us."
Jorrel Hato, who has only played as a left back for Chelsea, could also provide some backup for the centre-back position, given he has some experience playing centrally at Ajax.
The pressure would be on Trevoh Chalobah, though, who will almost certainly play an important role in the next three games.
Bear in mind that Chalobah already played a full 90 minutes in all but one of the seven games Chelsea have played this season, so the club will have to pay even more attention to his fitness and recovery.
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Gerry Crisandy is a freelance writer who has covered Chelsea for many years. His work has been published on The Chelsea Chronicle and Pride of London. He grew up idolising Michael Ballack and is a firm believer in expected goals.