Chelsea manager Enzo Maresca thinks Cole Palmer’s injury is “not random” and is concerned about the lingering effects of winning the Fifa Club World Cup.

The 23-year-old forward has been ruled out of Saturday’s Premier League match at home to Fulham.

Palmer’s injury has been linked to an unprecedented 12-month season where his team played 64 matches, including the expanded Club World Cup tournament in July.

After beating Paris St-Germain in New Jersey on July 13, and having less than two weeks to prepare for the current campaign, Chelsea had their shortest ever gap between seasons. This included the 2019-20 and 2020-21 campaigns, which were impacted by the Covid pandemic.

When asked about Palmer’s absence, Maresca said: “I don’t think that it is random that our three players with the most minutes last year were Levi [Colwill], Cole and Moi [Caicedo].

“Levi is injured, Cole too and Moi today only had his first training session since the West Ham game.

“It is not random, it is the amount of games. Look at [Manchester] City last year, they lost Rodri after two or three games. He was a player that had the most minutes for them.

“We are going to have problems this season for sure because of last season. But It’s about how we can adapt and get players to recover.”

England defender Colwill started 35 of Chelsea’s 38 league matches last season but is expected to be out for the majority of the season after knee surgery.

Meanwhile, Caicedo is now a doubt for the visit of Fulham, having been Chelsea’s only player to start every league match last season.

Palmer, who pulled out of last week’s win at West Ham with a niggle in the warm-up, was also a near ever-present in the previous campaign.

Maresca added: “I have said that with Cole we are much better with him than without him. But if he has some problems we need to give him the right time to recover.

“It doesn’t matter if Estevao [Willian] is there or not, we can’t tell Cole he can relax, we need Cole back at 100%.”

Maresca’s complaints occur within the wider context of global players’ union Fifpro’s legal actions against world football governing body Fifa.

Fifpro president Sergio Marchi claimed Fifa “chose to continue increasing its revenue at the expense of the players’ bodies and health” in July after Chelsea’s 3-0 victory over PSG to end the tournament in the United States.

That came in response to claims by Fifa president Gianni Infantino that he was running “the most successful club competition in the world”.