Frank Lampard has confirmed that Antonio Rudiger will be in the Chelsea squad for the Champions League clash with Lille tomorrow night (Tuesday).
The Blues host the French side needing a win to ensure a place in the knockout stages of the competition, although a draw may be good enough for them to progress, depending on other results.
And the Chelsea head coach has confirmed that the Blues have been boosted by the return from injury of Rudiger, who has not featured since the 5-2 win against Wolves at Molineux back in September.
But he was out training with the team today (Monday) ahead of tomorrow's game in west London, and Lampard confirmed he was in contention to feature, although he said Fikayo Tomori and Olivier Giroud will not be involved against Lille.
"He [Rudiger] is in the squad, so he has a chance. It is good to have him back," Lampard said at his pre-match press conference . "He is training really well and got his fitness work done. His injury is healed.
"[Fikayo] Tomori is out, he has a small, tiny strain around his hip area. It has bothered him for a little bit so we have taken him out for a couple of days. Olivier [Giroud] is still out as well."
Lampard added that it was a big boost to have Rudiger available again, although he was wary of putting too much pressure on the German, after a long injury lay-off.
"[It is] Potentially difficult," he said. "Our guard against that was to give him a lot of work. Created things behind the scenes in training that seem like matches and pure runniing.
"He has come through that and he looks fit and ready to go, I know he is hungry. In terms of people building him up, maybe rightly so.
"He is a good defender, you overlook the fact that people talk about youth, transfer bans but we had five big players injured for a period of time. "Carrying that on, Rudi is just back and Ruben is still out, you miss those individuals. And then see what he can add to us now."
