Chelsea’s home form has left a lot to be desired since Rafael Benitez took up the post as interim manager but they must turn it around against Stamford Bridge on Sunday and the Spaniard may call on captain John Terry to give the Blues the boost and leadership they desperately need.
John Obi Mikel and Victor Moses, on international duty, are unavailable whilst Oriol Romeu remains the only injury concern.
Arsenal’s defender Laurent Koscielny returns following a one-match suspension, but Mikel Arteta and Tomas Rosicky are sidelined with calf injuries and Gervinho is at the African Cup on Nations.
Who’d be in your Chelsea XI for tomorrow’s game?
P. Cech
C. Azpilicueta – D. Luiz – J. Terry (c) – A. Cole
Ramires – Lampard
Oscar – J. Mata – E. Hazard
Ba
Hopefully Terry’s return will have the desired effect for Chelsea as we need to turn our home form around and maintain the gap on the sides that our chasing us.
Which side would you pick?
the 4-2-3-1 formation it tactically gud to to subdue d gunners. I Benitez should feature d likes of Cech Azpilicueta Ivanovich Terry Cole Luiz Remires Mata Oscar Hazard Ba Oscar should be allow behind Ba not limiting him to d RW cos u will not get d best of him. I see chelsea beating Arsenal 3 nil.
I’ve been reading the various comments – and i think in typical Chelsea fashion we get ourselves in a mess around November and always have to get our act together – which we do some how. Right now, we really need to stay away from our current ..” issues” … and look at the next two matches. Both are a “must win” for us. I would put out our strongest team against Arsenal, who must not be underestimated. They have had a couple of good results against us and they are “up for it” so we need to stay focused and really keep it extremely tight. We cannot give them time on the ball and let them run at us. Which means we must keep hassling them up front and in midfield. Thats why it depends on what the players do today. They must give 200% and really play tight. We have a much better team. Arsenal at the moment are a one man team with Theo. They will come at us on the break, using the wings. There will be a lot of through balls to Theo. Thats why our forwards and mid field must stop this. Our front boys must track back. Our Defense must hold position – like the Corrinthians did against us.
I would not start with Terry because I think he is a liability at the moment. He does some unbelievably silly things at times – like gave away a Pen against Stoke and he’s only just been on for 5 mins.
I would play Torres and Ba up front as we got to get goals early. I would actually make Torres Captain. We all know about his story so far and I think its worth giving him this status – we’ve tried everything else. This is like the last chance for FT I think. As I said earlier, if he is not producing in the first half, I would simply take him off at half time.
I think Frank and Rameres can sit this out in the first half.
I would use Luiz as our holding midfielder and play Oscar, Mata and Hazard to support FT and BA
If Torres does not do the business in the first half, i would take him off at HT and replace him with Lamps and play Ba and Haz up front.
If we are winning, i would replace Oscar with JT and make sure we are totally strong at the back and then replace Mata with Rameres
Hopefully FT will produce and we can breathe easy. We can then go to Swansea and do a Napoli.
We really must play our strongest for these two games and everyone must give their all. If FT does not produce in these two games against Arsenal and Swansea then I think he’s had it with us. Its not the other way round.
As i said earlier, this will be my team for this match
Cech,
Azpi – Cahill – Ivanovic – Cole
Luiz
Oscar, Mata, Haz
Ba + Torres
Come on Chelsea.