A derby in all but name, the visitors will certainly be up for this one at Stamford Bridge tonight, so Chelsea will have to match them not only tactically but also in terms of energy, effort, and determination. And that hasn’t always been the case for us when facing “lesser” teams — Leeds are only a couple bad results away from being dragged back into a relegation battle.
Another thing that has come back to bite us a bit have been our attempts to rotate and try different things, but at some point, you have to be able to use your entire squad. The same 12-13 players cannot keep playing every 3-4 days. Thankfully, Saturday’s win over Wolves only needed about 45 minutes worth of effort, so we may be a bit more rested for tonight than usual.
For the WAGNH Community there is no doubt, this game needs a full strength lineup. And there’s pretty good consensus about what means full strength these days. Given the questionable status of Reece James (41%), that includes Malo Gusto today, while up front, Pedro Neto gets the nod from just about half the voters, but still well ahead of Alejandro Garnacho (16%).
4-2-3-1 (80%)
Sánchez (99%) | Cucurella (88%), Chalobah (94%), Fofana (69%), Gusto (48%) | Enzo (95%), Caicedo (98%) | Neto (52%), Palmer (91%), Estêvão (89%) | João Pedro (88%)
Andrey Santos (37%), Josh Acheampong (32%), and Liam Delap (23%) also collected a few votes, while Mamadou Sarr checks in with 17% for his first appearance in the voting.