Chelsea midfielder Mateo Kovacic has been ruled out for “some weeks” after suffering a hamstring injury in training on Thursday.
The Croatian has been one of the Blues’ star performers so far this season, but Thomas Tuchel confirmed the news ahead of Saturday’s Premier League clash with Newcastle.
“We had very sad news yesterday, he injured himself in the last minute of training and suffered a hamstring injury,” Tuchel said. “He will be out for some weeks because he’ll miss next week for sure and then comes the international break as well.
“It’s a minimum of those weeks. Hopefully, after the international break he can be back.
“He injured his hamstring doing a little bit too much in training, so also it’s my fault. You can call Mateo at three-o’clock at night and call him for tactical training, or set-piece training, or defensive training and he will be there with a smile, happy to do whatever is needed.”
Tuchel also confirmed that neither Romelu Lukaku, nor Timo Werner will be fit to return to action until after the international break, and urged his side to continue sharing the goalscoring burden in the pair’s absence.
Chelsea have already had 14 different goalscorers in the Premier League this season, three more than any other club.
“We have to compensate for the loss of Romelu and Timo and of course we’ve been scoring with different goalscorers,” Tuchel added.
“Now it’s even more necessary that we arrive in dangerous positions and in the box with a lot of players.
“It’s important that we bring bodies to our opponent’s box, that we are brave enough, free enough, to end our attacks with enough people in the box and increase our chances to score.
“In the end, we hope it won’t be Jorginho again who is our top scorer! We like him a lot and it’s no offence to him but we hope that our main guys are our strikers who can score regularly.
“But it’s good that we are dangerous from several positions, we are dangerous from set-pieces and that’s what we want.”
