Chelsea will be looking for a positive result when they pay Etihad a visit to face the current Premier League leaders Manchester City on Sunday.
Chelsea travel to Etihad to face Manchester City on Sunday, knowing well enough that anything less than a win would not be an acceptable result for Antonio Conte & co. The Italian manager though, does not have many pressing injury issues to deal with for the trip to the blue half of Manchester.
Thibaut Courtois should be the man in goal for Chelsea. It will be a toss up between Gary Cahill and Antonio Rudiger for the third spot in the back-three, especially with David Luiz still a doubt and unlikely to feature on Sunday.
As far as midfield is concerned, Ross Barkley and Tiemoue Bakayoko continue to remain doubts for the game and while either can be named on the bench, their appearances looks very unlikely. Antonio Conte highlighted on the former’s fitness struggles in his pre-match conference.
“With Ross, he had a really bad injury with Everton. When you have this type of bad injury you must have great passion – to try to work very well, but at the same time when you are arriving with a bad injury after a long period that you didn’t play, the risk to have little injuries is greater than another player.”
“But Ross is a good, young player and a really good guy, and now he needs to put all of himself to try to recover the time and show that he deserves a place to play at the World Cup.”
Thus, we should ideally see N’Golo Kante and Cesc Fabregas take the field in midfield, with Marcos Alonso and Victor Moses on either side as the wing-backs. Danny Drinkwater will be another option but the midfielder is likely to be on the bench.
In attack, Conte has tough decisions to make. The Italian can go with the fit-again Alvaro Morata, although he did not give a good account of himself against Manchester United. Thus, the Chelsea boss should go with Eden Hazard through the centre, with Willian and Pedro on either side to provide support to the Belgian.
