Everton vs Chelsea Team News: Updates On Diego Costa + Romelu Lukaku

Chelsea face a tough trip to Goodison Park on Saturday evening to face Everton looking to maintain their 100% start to the new season.

Ahead of the game, boss Jose Mourinho has been speaking at his pre-match press conference this afternoon and gave reporters an update on the fitness of star striker Diego Costa.

Reports this week claimed the Spaniard was facing up to six weeks out with a hamstring injury but thankfully for Chelsea, Mourinho says the injury isn’t as bad as first feared and he could still make the trip to Merseyside this weekend.

Costa remains a ‘big doubt’ as he hasn’t trained for the past two days and the best he can hope for is a place on the bench if he’s able to prove his fitness today, but Mourinho says he won’t take any chances with the player, while he has no other injury concerns to deal with.

Mourinho is quoted as saying by the clubs Twitter account:

‘We are trying everything for him [Costa] to play tomorrow. He didn’t train for the last two days. Today is the last day.’

‘If the reaction is positive he could be on the bench, if not, we don’t select him. At the moment, I don’t know.’

‘He is a big doubt, let’s see. Everyone else is fit.’

As for Everton they are sweating on the fitness of former Chelsea strikers Romelu Lukaku and Samuel Eto’o. Lukaku has a toe injury while Eto’o is lacking match fitness having only joined the club this week so the duo will be assessed just before the game tomorrow.

Roberto Martinez will be without on-loan Chelsea winger Christian Atsu as he’s unable to face his parent club, while Ross Barkley, Steven Pienaar, Darron Gibson, Bryan Oviedo and Arouna Kone all remain sidelined.