Chelsea face Nottingham Forest at Stamford Bridge in just under an hour, and the teams are in!
Last week saw Mauricio Pochettino able to add some new faces to his bench, and it’s the same story this week.
There are no changes to the starting lineup, but two big additions to the bench. Captain Reece James makes his first appearance in a squad since his surgery over Christmas, and Lesley Ugochukwu is also in the mix.
They join Malo Gusto, and Christopher Nkunku who were there last week, plus Levi Colwill is back too.
None are ready to start a game, clearly, but we should see a number of them in the second half today. They can really ramp up the competition in training for our final two fixtures of the season too. It’s a shame we didn’t have this kind of depth a couple of months ago, but at least things are looking brighter overall for a good summer and preseason.
Mauricio Pochettino made it very clear after our last game that nobody would be getting into the team just because they were a “big name” and he’s been true to his word here. Any of these returning stars who want a chance are going to have to prove they deserve it with good showings as subs and in training.
But players like Mykhailo Mudryk who have been basically guaranteed starts recently through a lack of options will feel the pressure on now.
We’ve played 5 good halves of football in a row – let’s now make it 7 please. We’ve had far too many false dawns this season, and we just want to end on a high.
Here are the full team line-ups for Nottingham Forest vs Chelsea (kick off at 17:30 GMT)
CHELSEA:
Petrovic; Chalobah, Thiago Silva, Badiashile, Cucurella; Caicedo, Gallagher; Madueke, Palmer, Mudryk; Jackson