“Surgery” – Maresca says the word all Chelsea fans were dreading over their star player

There is one topic on the lips of all Chelsea fans this week – the fitness of Cole Palmer.

The team can’t seem to create anything without him, but he has a chronic groin issue which is holding him back. Enzo Maresca has used him consistently rather than allowing him to recover, and now looks to be paying the price.

Chelsea boss on Cole Palmer fitness

Cole Palmer looks to the skies in frustration as Chelsea blow it against Newcastle. (Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)

Asked in his press conference today about the fitness of the attacking midfielder, Maresca didn’t bring much confidence:

“Cole is probably the only [player] that we need to assess a little bit. The rest are okay, just recovering from last week.

“He did already a huge effort last Saturday to try and play the game. He tried Saturday morning, he was not 100% but he wants to be there to help teammates in that kind of game. It was painful [for him] so we decided to change. We await day by day to see how he is and then decide what we do.”

We told Maresca he needed to leave Palmer out in one of these last few games – instead he played the second half against Brentford, 97 minutes against Bayern Munich, then lasted just 20 minutes against Man U before limping off.

Maresca talks about surgery for Palmer

To make things far worse, Maresca is now talking about surgery for the attacking midfielder:

“The medical staff didn’t mention to me about surgery until today. I don’t know if it will be in the next weeks, but I don’t think so to be honest.”

If Palmer misses significant time with injury or recovering from surgery, Maresca may just have cost himself his job with the decision to run his star player into the ground.