Luiz Felipe Scolari yesterday revealed that Didier Drogba is likely to miss the first few weeks of the season as he continues his rehabilitation from a knee injury, leaving Chelsea with one fit striker for their opening Barclays Premier League match against Portsmouth. The Brazilian manager may want to wrap Nicolas Anelka in cotton wool for the next 13 days because the France striker is his only option for his first match in English football, with Andriy Shevchenko recovering from a groin operation and Salomon Kalou playing for the Ivory Coast at the Olympic Games.

Scolari would like to have more options to cover Anelka, but it is Drogba who will be most badly missed. The 30-year-old was left behind from the club’s preseason tour after suffering a setback to a knee injury that was operated on last December and has yet to return to full training. Chelsea are hopeful that Drogba will be fit for their third match of the season, against Tottenham Hotspur on August 31, but given his history of knee problems they may choose to keep him back until after the international break at the start of next month.

“I speak to the doctor every day and he gives me a report,” Scolari said.

“Drogba is getting better, starting to run in the field. He has a fitness coach there and I hope next week he will be ready to start training. He will not be available for the first game. It is important he is fully fit and in good shape.

“If he plays without his condition, it’s not good for him and not good for us. When he is in good condition, he will play. If not, we will lose him for longer. He will probably miss the first two games, but by the third game he will be ready if there are no more problems. When you have problems in the knee, you never know.”

Drogba’s injury will give Anelka the opportunity to make good on his pledge to improve on last season’s dismal displays for Chelsea. The 29-year-old scored one league goal after his £15 million move from Bolton Wanderers in January, but has looked sharp in preseason, scoring four goals as Chelsea completed an embarrassingly one-sided 5-0 win over a weakened AC Milan team yesterday. Frank Lampard scored the other.

“I think it was important for Anelka, but more important for us, for the fans and for me, the coach, to have more confidence for this player,” Scolari said. “He’s one of the players that we need this season. I was happy today, not because he scored four goals, but he played with more quality and freedom than in the other games.

That’s important for us because that was our last training match, and against a big club like Milan. It’s fantastic for [Anelka’s] confidence to score four times against Milan. He believes more, and the other players believe in him more.

“In the last few games he has been making more runs through the middle than before. I asked him to do that and I wanted him down the middle, not down the left or the right. That is important because we have one striker, and that is Anelka.”

Scolari confirmed that his plans for the Portsmouth match are nearly complete, with one remaining area of doubt centring on how he can squeeze Lampard, Deco and Michael Ballack into the same midfield.

Scolari could soon have another player to accommodate after Robinho rejected Real Madrid’s offer of an improved contract over the weekend and told the club he wants to move to Stamford Bridge.

“I only know 85 per cent of my team,” Scolari said. “Today I received Ballack for the first time. I need to assess the players at Cobham [Chelsea’s training ground] to get that last 15 per cent, but I have the main team.”