Chelsea would hate to lose at home to bitter rivals QPR, but the relegation battlers will fancy their chances.
It should be a happy homecoming for Chelsea’s Champions League heroes, but today’s game could be anything but. The bitterness from the stands could distract from what could be an engaging game of football.
The FA have already suspended pre-match handshakes, to spare the attention on both sets of players before kick-off.
Should Chelsea dispatch QPR, then fans will go home happy, with cries of ‘Your Going Down’ directed at their rivals, but it may not be that simple.
Chelsea have a number of problems in defence, and rotation-happy Di Matteo will have to be at his cleverest to get things right.
Confirmed absences are: David Luiz (injury) Gary Cahill (injury) and Branislav Ivanovic (suspension) – all key players, and it is far from ideal that John Terry will play this game bearing in mind the situation with Anton Ferdinand, but Di Matteo has little choice.
He has Bosingwa, Bertrand, Cole, and Ferreira as options, although which one of those will partner Terry in central defence is anyone’s guess, most likely one of the Portuguese full-backs. He may even pull a shock and switch Michael Essien to centre-back as he experiments ahead of the two cup finals.
With Terry suspended for Munich, it really sends home the importance of getting one or both or Cahill and Luiz fit, to help combat the prolific Mario Gomez.
Bobby Zamora and Djibril Cisse are hardly in the same league as the German, but both will fancy their chances against a makeshift blues backline.
If the game was at Loftus Road we would definitely fancy QPR for the win, but Mark Hughes’ side have a wretched away record which they will want to improve upon.
Both sides need the three points, Chelsea need to stay in the race for fourth, while QPR came into the weekend just one point above the relegation zone.
Zamora and Cisse are both players who are good in the air, and would get the advantage over a Ferreira or a Bosingwa if the service was right, so Chelsea will need their full-backs to be on the top of their games to stem the deliveries.
Jon Obi Mikel will also be tasked with giving the defence extra protection, whether he will be too exhausted is another matter.
This one will come down to who wants it the most, and while Chelsea have the edge in quality, QPR have the advantage in having their players fresh.
It should be an exciting game, we just hope it is played in the right spirit and the Terry-Ferdinand affair does not overshadow it any more than it already has done.
We may not have handshakes before the game, but let’s hope we have them after, whatever the result.
image: © Ben Sutherland
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