Rumour has it that although the initial diagnosis wasn't a positive one, until the swelling goes down enough to perform an MRI the exact nature and extent of Lucas' injury won't be known. By most accounts that means later on today there's a good chance we'll find out just went wrong, which jumble of letters describe the part that went wrong, and how long he's likely to be out because of it. Until then, though, nothing is entirely certain—no matter how bad the circumstantial evidence seems.
Rumour also has it that until solid news on that front comes out it will be difficult to start things off with anything other than an acknowledgement that there has in fact been no news yet, and that no news is no news.
With that out of the way, and accepting that a potentially season-ending injury to one of the club's key players rather puts a damper on any attempts at in-depth tactical deconstructions of events at Stamford Bridge, we're still left with the need to move on to something. And something in this case might as well be Sebastian Coates, since by most agree he played well in his second outing for Liverpool. Plus there just happens to be video available detailing his exploits, and that always helps.
As against Stoke in his first Liverpool match, Coates made one major error on the night, the kind of thing that would have had many fans calling for the head of a more experienced centre half. Thankfully on both occasions Liverpool went on to win the match, allowing the more reactionary sorts to mark it down as a learning experience for a far from experienced centre half. For most, however, far more important than David Luiz throwing away the chance at a penalty by sticking his leg out and beginning his swan dive before he'd even reached a recklessly sprawling Coates—and thereby earning himself a yellow card instead of a penalty—will be the way the young Liverpool defender shrugged off the early misstep to put in a nearly perfect performance from that point on.
He may not look the finished product quite yet, but his quality—and confidence—is already hard to deny. Amongst all the tackles, challenges, and headers, perhaps the only thing that stands out in any kind of negative light when one revisits his performance on Tuesday is his tendency to chase the ball at times. There may not be anything unusual about a defender pressing his man, but if his occasional wanderlust isn't paired with teammates willing and able to cover for it, it could lead to problems. Which, in a way, brings things back around to Lucas once again. For now, though, it's time to revisit Coates' performance against Chelsea, and with it one more reason to think that along with an increasingly assured starting duo of Martin Skrtel and Daniel Agger, a resurgent Glen Johnson, a revelatory Jose Enrique, and another promising but already capable youngster in Martin Kelly, Liverpool's future in defence suddenly seems far brighter than it did before the season began.
Video by TeamCharlie26Adam