Chelsea went into Thursday’s game against Tottenham with effectively just one team available to pick.
That will be pretty much the same today. In fact, there will be even fewer options for the manager to choose from. Jimi Tauriainen and Leo Castledine both picked up injuries in the thrilling win for the U21 team on Friday, having been on the bench for the first team on Thursday.
There’s no way they will be involved in a third game in a few days, so we can rule them out.
Tauriainen came off the bench against Spurs, and given how tired the starters will be, there will be even more call to us some of these young players today.
Mauricio Pochettino did vaguely confirm in his post-Spurs presser that Levi Colwill and perhaps Christopher Nkunku would be back and on the bench for his team today, but that’s not going to help out a first XI who played just 65 hours ago.
West Ham a classic trap in waiting
It’s going to be a very difficult matchup on that front too. West Ham have had a clear midweek, while this will be our fourth game in 2 weeks. They have a lot less to play for, and it seems like the end of the David Moyes era has arrived, so there could be a bit of a disengaged aspect to their play, but we can’t count on that at all.
In the modern game, even teams with nothing to play for are full of players trying to earn personal incentives, play to impress scouts or earn a move, or even just for personal pride. So we would be crazy to write West Ham off just because we should be more motivated than them.
We just have to hope we can start brightly as we did on Thursday, that sets us up nicely for the rest of the game.
