Preview | Chelsea vs Tottenham Hotspur | Premier League
Tottenham Hotspur’s recent 2-3 loss to Arsenal in the league has dented our chances of a top-four chance greatly. Still, surely, we have another opportunity to strengthen our claim towards a UCL spot for next season, with the visit to Stamford Bridge on Thursday evening.
Chelsea also prevented Aston Villa from gaining all three points last week, so that’s another positive for us in our pursuit of UCL next season. The Brummies are seven points ahead of us, but we have two games in hand over them. Spurs have to draw inspiration from their second-half performance against the Gunners and take that into the game against Mauricio Pochettino’s side away at SW6.
Tottenham shall be without the services of Destiny Udogie, Timo Werner, Ben Davies and Oliver Skipp for the trip downtown. It would have been fun to see the reception Werner would get on his return to Chelsea, but as it stands, this bunch of players will not take part against Chelsea. Apart from Skipp, the other three are out of the season. [h/t Daily Mail ]
The rest of the team will remain the same, with the exception of the long-term absentees including Fraser Foster, Manor Solomon and Ryan Sessegnon.
For Chelsea, they could see Levi Colwill and Christopher Nkunku make a return against the Lilywhites with their presence confined to full team training via their website. Speaking of H2H, who can forget the last game between the sides?
In a memorable clash back in November, Chelsea secured a 4-1 victory over Tottenham, who were down to nine men. Nicolas Jackson made the best use of Postecoglou‘s bold high-line strategy to net a hat-trick, following Palmer’s penalty that equalized Dejan Kulusevski’s opener. Don’t judge that game by the scoreline though. Tottenham put in a massive shift before the injuries to James Maddison and Micky van de Ven.
Beating Chelsea certainly won’t be an easy task for the Lilywhites. They have won seven of their last nine on home soil (one draw, one loss). Chelsea have scored 29 goals through their last 10 home league games.
We have to bounce back to our best soon. AngeBall deserves a decent finish to the first season, and the next season onwards, we can start fixing our issues in the backline.
