Venue: Stamford Bridge
Date: Sunday, 11 November
Kick-off: 16.00 GMT
There’s not a lot of let-up in our games and after the excitement of a late win midweek, its back to the Premier League for this afternoon’s game against Liverpool. Given the way Liverpool are this season we’d be forgiven for thinking they might be a bit easier than Shakhtar were – but that’s never how it works with this fixture really.
Of course, going into the game, all the talk has predictably been around the Suarez/JT connection and Fernando Torres’ lack of goals but let’s hope by the end of the day, the focus will be on agent Rodgers former connections.
MANAGERS’ VIEWS
Ahead of today’s game, Roberto Di Matteo is optimistic they won’t be going home in an open-top bus, saying “I think you would have expected them to be a little bit higher up the table if you look at their squad. There’s a lot of Premier League experience in their team – Johnson, Skrtel, Agger, Gerrard, Enrique. They have a couple of youngsters, but so do we. It’s anybody’s guess why they raise their game against us.
They seem to be our bogey team, whatever the reasons are. They seem always to play exceptionally well against us and get results. It is always very difficult to beat them. Whenever they play against us they have one of the best games of their season. It also happened when they played against us when we weren’t at our best. But we’re looking very good, very sharp at the moment, and full of confidence. We’ll pose different kinds of questions to Liverpool on Sunday than we did in the past. We are in good spirits, full of confidence and the team is playing well.”
Brendan Rodgers meanwhile is hopeful the ticker tape will be out after 90 minutes, saying “Traditionally Stamford Bridge is a very difficult place to go and get a result but we are going there with great confidence. We know the offensive threats they have but our concentration will be on our own game. We have some really top players here that can hurt any opponent on a given day. That will be the objective. For us it is about collecting the points and collecting as many as we can. Whether that is at Chelsea or wherever, it doesn’t matter. We just look to keep our performance level up because it has been at a good level.”
SQUAD NEWS
For Chelsea, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole (hamstring) are out although John Terry may get a recall.
For Liverpool, Glen Johnson (hamstring) and Pepe Reina (hamstring) could both return.
TEAMS
CHELSEA (expected line-up): Cech; Bertrand, Terry, Cahill, Ivanovic; Mikel, Ramires; Hazard, Oscar, Mata; Torres.
LIVERPOOL (expected line-up): Jones; Enrique, Skrtel, Agger, Johnson; Allen, Sahin, Gerrard; Sterling, Suso, Suarez.
LAST SEASON
Chelsea 1-2 Liverpool (20th November 2011)
PREDICTIONS
I hate this fixture because no matter how bad Liverpool are, Di Matteo is right – they up their game for us. They’ve lost just 2 from their last 11 Premier League meetings against us – and worse still, done the double over us in 3 of the last 4 seasons. Doesn’t bode well for this afternoon does it?
Blue is the colour
