Five-hundred and two days of football Romeo Lavia has missed since joining Chelsea 811 days ago. That is, staggeringly, 61.8% of the time the 21-year-old has been at Stamford Bridge spent on the sidelines.

Lavia has missed a total of 77 matches for the Blues in all competitions since completing the £58million switch from Southampton. That number is set to increase following the midfielder's latest setback. Just five minutes into Wednesday evening's draw with Qarabag in the Champions League, the Belgian was left on the floor in pain.

As soon as you saw Lavia down in pain, you knew his night was over. Even if it was not too serious, Enzo Maresca was never going to risk him. The Chelsea head coach said this little over 24 hours prior to the game in Baku: "The main target for Romeo now is to be fit. Don't get any injuries.

"For me, at this moment, Romeo is where Reece [James] was more or less one year ago in terms of [being] back after a long time. We need to...