Venue: Stamford Bridge
Date: Saturday, 24 October 2009
Kick-off: 1730 BST
We had our bit of fun in Europe mid-week, now it’s back to the bread and butter of the Premier League and an evening kick-off at home to Blackburn. Last time out in the league wasn’t the best day we’ve ever had at the office – in terms of defending anyway and we’ll have to do a lot better than we did against Villa if we’re to reclaim the top spot again (albeit maybe temporarily). United have time to blow up their beach balls before facing Liverpool tomorrow, so we need to put a bit of pressure on them with a result here.
Blackburn have lost their last eight away games in the Premier League whilst we’re unbeaten at home in our last 15 league matches but with Manchester United next up for Blackburn, Allardyce will be looking for something from this. Carlo Ancelotti meanwhile, will be hoping not to hear his name sung in quite the same manner it had been in our last meeting with Blackburn.
MANAGER’S THOUGHTS
With Carlo Ancelotti called away due to his father’s ill health, it was left up to Ray Wilkins to do all the pre-match chat, although he assures us “Carlo will decide who plays.” Not the best news for Ricardo Carvalho maybe, who didn’t get a look in after his performance against Villa, although on that point, Wilkins insists “Ricardo was not dropped on Wednesday night. He was rested. He played three games on the spin, went away and played international football on two occasions, and Carlo decided he would leave him out on Wednesday. We are perfectly happy with the way Riccy has been playing. We made a couple of errors at Aston Villa but every club in the country makes errors at set-plays. We have worked on them and spoken about it a lot.”
And our defence is definitely an area Allardyce is paying attention to, with the Blackburn manager suggesting “It’s fair to say we have been working on a few things from dead-ball situations. I wonder if the message is getting across from what the manager wants his defence to do and what they are doing. But I also find with the big clubs they defend the same way whoever they are playing and don’t change to adapt to different opponents, whereas we will alter our methods depending on who we are up against. There has been some pretty poor defending generally in the league this season from lots of teams and there aren’t as many good defenders around as there used to be.”
SQUAD NEWS
For Chelsea, it seems Jose Bosingwa and Yuri Zhirkov both miss out with knee injuries, whilst neither Alex nor John Obi Mikel are fit enough for a return. Didier Drogba returns from his suspension in Europe midweek so despite his brace, Salomon Kalou is likely to take his usual place on the bench.
For Blackburn, Vince Grella (thigh) is out and Pascal Chimbonda (calf) is doubtful. Di Santo is ineligible to play against us.
TEAMS
CHELSEA (from): Cech, Hilario, Turnbull, Ivanovic, A Cole, Carvalho, Terry, Belletti, Hutchinson, Bruma, Essien, Lampard, J Cole, Ballack, Malouda, Deco, Kalou, Drogba, Sturridge, Anelka, Borini
BLACKBURN (from): Whoever doesn’t have a virus apparently.
LAST MEETING
Chelsea 2-0 Blackburn (17 May 2009)
PREDICTION
The statistics are pretty much weighted Chelsea’s way for this one. We’ve won 11 out of the last 13 against Blackburn and they haven’t managed to score against us in the last six of them. Add to that the fact Nicolas Anelka has scored 10 times in 12 Premier League starts against today’s opposition and if it wasn’t for the fact six of our last eight goals have been conceded from set-pieces, we could almost start to feel confident here.
REFEREE
Alan Wiley
Blue is the colour
