A few interesting developments before Chelsea take on Stoke have transpired, and the great news is Costa is back and could potentially start. I have a theory; if he starts he was never injured, if he starts on the bench the injury was not as bad as we thought.
Experienced players tend to withdraw themselves as soon as they feel a slight discomfort if this was the issue I am happy, Chelsea have an intelligent player like Costa capable of sacrificing a few minutes in order to play a role in 9 critical games.
Another major detail to emerge from the press conference is most of the squad was back for training from the international break by Tuesday.
Chelsea tend to perform poorly after an international break with most players coming back suffering from serious fatigue and not having enough time to recover and prepare for the next game.
This time it appears Hazard played the most football over the international break and was the last man back unfortunately Chelsea need him now more than ever. If we wrap up the Stoke game quickly we can almost bet Hazard is the first player to get rested.
The final thing to catch my attention from the pre-match conference is the fact that the squad is training harder than before something Chelsea never had the luxury of doing when they played a match every 3 days.
A few pundits have blamed Jose’s lack of rotation for the recent slump in form from Fabregas it doesn’t explain how Ronaldo and Messi play as many games and still perform at very high levels.
My theory is Fabregas dip in form is actually a dip in form of the whole squad. I expect to see a marked improvement in our performance between now and the end of the season because the team has exactly 7 days between each match to train and prepare for each encounter.
Players that played the least football over the international break are most likely to start against stoke and I expect a few regulars starters to be on the bench ready to lift our game in the second half especially if we find ourselves deadlocked at the break.
I am also putting money on Cech starting this match.
