Chelsea's preparations for their upcoming meeting with Brentford have been boosted by the return of both Reece James and N'Golo Kante to training.
James suffered an ankle injury against Manchester City before the international break and had to withdraw from the England squad, while Kante was forced to isolate after testing positive for COVID-19 and has not featured since the same City game.
Kante made it back to training earlier this week and Chelsea have now confirmed that he has been joined by James, who is out of the swimming pool and back working with the rest of his teammates who have not travelled for international duty.
With four days to go until the meeting with Brentford on 16 October, manager Thomas Tuchel will be hoping to build up both players' fitness in time for them to feature in some capacity, perhaps from the start.
However, the boss does still have a handful of injury concerns ahead of the game, namely involving Christian Pulisic, Antonio Rudiger and Romelu Lukaku.
Pulisic has not been seen in Chelsea blue since the opening week of the season, after which a combination of COVID-19 and an ankle injury have ravaged his campaign.
There is cautious optimism that Pulisic could soon be back in Chelsea training, but club officials will be keen to conduct their own tests on Rudiger, who missed Germany's 4-0 win over North Macedonia on Monday because of a back injury.
Building up for a return to @premierleague action! ? pic.twitter.com/mYmwEMrZ2u
— Chelsea FC (@ChelseaFC) October 12, 2021
Rudiger's issue is not thought to be particularly serious, and the same is hoped for the muscle problem that saw Lukaku released from the Belgium camp early.
Chelsea will return from the international break sitting pretty at the top of the Premier League, having weathered a bumpy run of form and come out on top with an emphatic 3-1 win over Southampton.
Source: 90min
