Tammy Abraham is hopeful that he won't have to miss much time after an injury scare against Valencia.
The striker had to be removed from Wednesday's Champions League match on a stretcher after a clash with Ezequiel Garay just before half-time.
Abraham and Garay went up for a challenge and as the pair fell to the ground, Abraham landed on Garay's legs and appeared to injure his hip in the process.
Though Abraham was in serious pain on the field, the 22-year-old said after the game that he's optimistic about his prognosis.
“It’s much better, much better than when it happened," Abraham told Chelsea TV after a 2-2 draw.
“At the time I was fearful of the worst obviously, but I got in and was able to walk again, move about.
“I’m thankful, hopefully it’s not too long. I’ll have a scan tomorrow to see what the news is but hopefully it is just a bruise. It was a knee near my hip arena, hopefully it’s nothing too serious.”
Chelsea manager Frank Lampard was also fearful immediately after the injury, but said he was also hopeful that his star striker won't be out for long.
"The word at half-time was it looked quite severe, a bang on the hip," Lampard said.
"Then the word after the game was it might not be as severe as we first thought. That’s as much details as I have.”
Getty Images
The two teams played out a thrilling match on Wednesday, an encounter that featured four goals and should have had several more.
Valencia, in particular, were guilty of missing two glaring chances, one from Maxi Gomez in the first half and another from Rodrigo Moreno in the dying stages.
In the end, Chelsea emerged with control of their own destiny in Group H, as they will reach the last 16 with a win at home against Lille on the final matchday.
Lampard admitted that his side are slightly fortunate to be in such a position after watching their opponents fluff their lines several times.
“We both had incredible chances, we had one in the first few minutes," Lampard said. "We had numerous ones in the first half, so did they. Maybe their chances were more clear-cut than ours.
"I wouldn’t say I feel fortunate. Did I love the match? No I didn’t love it. Because it hasn’t been many times this season where I have had to say ‘we kind of got away with that’. Today was one of those because they missed big opportunities.
"Perhaps we deserved the slices of luck that we got tonight, but I won’t take away from the fact that we have to take some of our opportunities. It could have been 5-5, 6-6, one of those games.”