Conte: Costa absent due to injury

Antonio Conte has claimed Diego Costa was missing from his side's emphatic 3-0 win over Leicester City on Saturday evening due to an injury and not because of a row with staff.

Speculation was rife from Friday evening that the striker was set to be omitted from the league leaders' squad for the trip to the Foxes after he had an argument with a fitness trainer about the extent of his 'injury', with the latter believing it to not be as serious as Costa was claiming.

Conte was reported to have sided with his trainer and allied to rumours that a £30m-per-year net salary offer to play in China had unsettled him, this was taken as the reason for his absence in Chelsea's victory.

However, Conte has denied this was the case.

“This is the truth," he said. "On Tuesday Diego stopped training because he felt a pain in his back and from that moment he doesn’t train again this week.

"And for this reason today he wasn’t available – for the starting XI or the bench or the squad. This is the reason, this is the truth.

“I think there has been a lot of speculation about this topic. If there is a problem, and I repeat if, with the players then in my career I prefer to sort the problem in the changing room, not outside and not in press conference. But I repeat – if. I have told the truth.

"I don’t know anything about this. The club don’t talk to me about this so it can be only speculation."

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