Kerr Sidelined as Chelsea Visit Barcelona

On Wednesday, Chelsea will play a high-stakes showdown in the champions league against Barcelona that they will play without a star striker, Sam Kerr who is still recovering with an anterior cruciate ligament injury. Australian forward, who has come back to the field with a brace in the club 6-0 thumping against St Polten last week has been sidelined of the next game though she has shown promising results.

Kerr missed Sunday draw against Liverpool particularly, which cast doubts on her fitness. The move by the manager of Chelsea Sonia Bompastor has been since explained as being solely precautionary and being a well-planned hierarchy of recovery measures.

Bompastor said, “Sam is all right, he will likely be taking the national team next week. But she will never be available to us again. It is only a matter of controlling her comeback. She received 90 minutes against St Pollen and it was in the plan that she would get rest and not to play the two matches that followed.

Chelsea will miss Kerr facing Barcelona side that is in hot form after winning three consecutive matches in the competition. Bompastor underlined that her team is to be tighter, more accurate and with full attention in case they want to face the Spanish giants.

When we do not win, then we are not happy. Not to do what we want to do, that makes us not happy, she said. We might not have many opportunities with Barcelona. You must be clinical when you play against a team that is at the top.

The mounting pressure is on the Blues following some inconsistencies and their journey to Barcelona is a crucial event of their European campaign. As Kerr is likely to re-join Australia soon, the task of the attacking burden of the Chelsea team has now moved to the rest of the frontline, one which is now under pressure to perform without their most prolific goal-scorer.