Chelsea team news: Lampard confirms quadruple injury blow ahead of Burnley trip

Chelsea have been dealt a quadruple injury blow with four key players ruled out of Saturday’s Premier League trip to Burnley, Frank Lampard has confirmed today.

N’Golo Kante missed Wednesday night’s Champions League win over Ajax due to a groin injury that he sustained while away with France during the international break earlier this month.

Lampard has confirmed Kante remains on the sidelines this weekend and he’s refusing to put a fixed timeframe on the midfielders recovery as the Blues boss wants to give him time to finally overcome the niggling injury.

Antonio Rudiger has returned to full training recently after recovering from a troublesome groin problem but the German defender won’t be available for selection against Burnley tomorrow evening. However, Lampard says the centre-back is getting closer to returning to full fitness and he hopes to have him available within the next fortnight.

Chelsea’s options in the middle of defence are further limited as Andreas Christensen is also still on the sidelines as he continues to overcome a thigh injury that’s kept him out of the last two matches.

Ross Barkley will also miss Saturday’s trip to Turf Moor after picking up an ankle injury during the win over Newcastle last weekend but Lampard is hopeful the midfielder will be available again next week.

Speaking at his press conference today, Lampard told Chelseafc.com:

‘N’Golo won’t be ready. He’s training on his own with some physical work because he’s had a few issues. We need to get him right now because he’s been in and out through the season as we all know.

‘There’s no real timeframe on it. I just want him fit. He’s played a lot of football for four years, he’s had a big injury off the back of last season, and maybe he’s suffering from that big injury and the fallout from that.

‘It’s maybe now time to take a small step back to get his fitness up and be confident we won’t have a domino effect of small injuries.’

‘Rudiger won’t be ready for the weekend, but he’s getting closer. He’s outside training with us. He had a bad injury. He didn’t play since April, played half a game against Wolves, so this is again a fallout from last season’s injury for us. Unfortunately, that’s the nature of it.

‘Rudi’s close now, so he should hopefully be involved with us in the next week or two.’ Christensen is still out. Ross Barkley is out, not majorly out, just out, so hopefully fit for next week.’

So Chelsea will have to make-do without four key players for tomorrow’s trip to Burnley while Ruben Loftus-Cheek also remains on the sidelines with an Achilles injury so Lampard has plenty of fitness concerns to contend with.