New injury ‘tough’ on Hudson-Odoi – Lampard

Frank Lampard has admitted that Callum Hudson-Odoi’s injury setback is a major blow for the player and Chelsea.

Hudson-Odoi, who missed the early part of the season with a because of a ruptured Achilles tendon, returned to training on Thursday after a hamstring problem and suffered a recurrence of the injury.

“He had a re-injury yesterday. We’re having a scan on him this afternoon, so he’ll be (out) longer than expected,” Lampard confirmed.

Lampard insisted Hudson-Odoi was not rushed back to training – and the Blues boss bemoaned the injury problems which have blighted Chelsea’s season.

N’Golo Kante, Tammy Abraham and Chistian Pulisic are among the players currently unavailable and it was hoped that Hudson-Odoi would soon be back in action.

Lampard said: “It’s tough. He wasn’t rushed back. The signs were that he was fit to train – clearly we do that (assess a player’s fitness) with every player – and he re-injured in his first session with us.

“It’s frustrating for him, definitely – a young boy so keen to play, as you’d expect, and frustrating because it’s another injury for us.

“It hasn’t been spoken about that much – we’ve had probably the worst injury list of certainly the top group of the table.

“Lots of numbers injured and important players like Kante, Ruben Loftus-Cheek etc. It started the season that way and it’s happened again in the middle of the season.

“So we’re working against that to try and get the best results.”

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