Thibaut Courtois Red Card appeal rejected means Asmir Begovic has to come out of Semi-Retirement

Chelsea’s appeal against the red card shown to goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois during Saturday’s 2-2 draw against Swansea has been rejected.

The Belgium international will serve a one-match ban.

This means that Asmir Begovic will feature on Sunday against Manchester City, it’s quite ironic in that for everyone saying that Begovic had gone to Chelsea to “retire” he would have actually featured more this season so far (albeit over two league games)

The wider concern is that if Chelsea were to lose on Sunday they would already be giving up a 5 point lead to Manchester City and would be on a streak of 3 games without a win (Community Shield included). Now obviously you don’t want to guilty of building up a game too much but the way ‘City performed last night was far more convincing than how Chelsea did on Saturday, what was already a big game has just taken on a little bit more importance.