Chelsea took a huge step towards their season objectives on Sunday when they beat Liverpool at home.
There’s still three massive games to play, including two against our direct rivals for a top 5 place, Nottingham Forest and Newcastle.
But before we start thinking about the trip to St James’ Park coming up this weekend, we’ve got to finish the job against Djurgarden in the Conference League.
A comfortable 4-1 first leg win has us in a commanding position, and many Chelsea fans will already be thinking about buying their Conference League Final Tickets, but we saw in the last round where we lost at home to Legia Warsaw that things don’t always go to plan.
Enzo Maresca will be keen to pick the most rotated team he can get away with, given the magnitude of the game on Sunday, and it will be interesting to see if he keeps up his philosophy from the first leg.
In that game we saw Enzo Fernandez and Moises Caicedo play 45 minutes each. Neither seemed affected by that against Liverpool, so it seems a safe bet we’ll see a similar setup.
Romeo Lavia won’t be risked, likely not even as a sub, he’s still only fit for one game a week, and won’t see more action that that for the rest of the season, we’d suspect.
Reece James will return to play in midfield as he did in the first leg, and we will also likely see a return for Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who has made this competition his own over the course of the season.
Fans at Stamford Bridge will be most excited to see Tyrique George, who was unlucky to only get a brief cameo against the Reds at the weekend. Against a Djurgarden team who really didn’t convince defensively in the first leg, the tricky winger could really feast.
Get through this second leg and we will be thinking about the final – and that’s where Maresca’s job really gets tricky. We will face far stronger opposition than we have in this competition so far, whether it’s Real Betis or Fiorentina who go through. Does the the Italian coach stick with the players like KDH and George who have got him this far, or play his strongest team to secure the trophy in Wroclaw?
He won’t be worrying about it just yet, but it’s very much a question mark that’s on the horizon for him.
