It’s another Champions League night in Spain for Chelsea tomorrow night, and the nerves will be setting in big time now.
The Blues will jump on a jet on Tuesday to head to Madrid and get ready to walk out into the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium with the famous UCL music playing in front of thousands of volatile Real Madrid fans!
Real Madrid are currently second in La Liga on 59 points, chasing Barcelona on 72 points. They have Atletico Madrid breathing down their necks fighting for second, and Real Madrid actually lost their last game in the league, going down 3-2 to Villarreal.
However, in the two games before that, they scored a massive 10 goals, thrashing Barcelona 4-0 in the Copa del Rey semi-final.
You don’t need me to tell you how dangerous this team are and how incredibly tough this game is going to be over the two legs. Chelsea are massive underdogs in this tie. But we’ve been here before, and as we all know, we’ve won this competition twice now against all the odds.
As underdogs we tend to fair better without the pressure, and as we have seen in the last few seasons, no matter what our league form is, we often manage to turn up for the European games.
It would have been much better going into this if Frank Lampard had got a win in his first game on Saturday, but he also only had two training sessions with his new squad. Things will be a little clearer now and I think he might switch the formation back to a three at the back.
Chelsea also have the advantage of playing away first and being able to go back to Stamford Bridge for the second leg. If we can get a respectable result in Madrid, then we have every chance of going through back at The Bridge on a UCL night, when it really does come alive there.
I think we will see something like this tomorrow night:
This is probably exactly what I would go with. I think we need to pack the midfield and use wingbacks – this gives us a threat on the counter as well as stabilising our defence.
Unfortunately I do not expect Thiago Silva to start the game as he only returned to full training on Monday. Mason Mount is still going to be a slight doubt despite training again yesterday, but hopefully he should at least be fine to start on the bench. And I think playing a front two of Raheem Sterling and Joao Felix whilst lacks height, does give us our biggest threat. The crosses from James and Chilwell will need to be driven and low.
Marc Cucurella concerns me, but he has performed much better in a back three so I think he would be fine there.
I do think that Lampard will probably start with Havertz though over Sterling, but my lineup is more in hope rather than predicted.
