Chelsea face incredibly difficult test against Leeds who have the quality and desire to win at Stamford Bridge – Talk Chelsea

Chelsea’s season hangs by a thread after defeat in the EFL Cup.

They’re wallowing in mid desk within the Premier League, seemingly unable to achieve increased than eighth or decrease than 14th. Their final hope of glory is the FA Cup, and our subsequent recreation in that competitors comes up on Wednesday, earlier than the mud has even settled on the league cup closing defeat’s fallout.

Online betting will let you know that we’re overwhelming favourites for the sport in opposition to Leeds – however we wouldn’t agree in any respect.

We’re at residence, positive. And we did nicely on the way in which to the League Cup closing by dispatching decrease league opposition alongside the way in which. However Leeds are a distinct matter. They’re a Premier League workforce in Championship workforce clothes. Their entrance line is fearsome, they usually’re filled with confidence and a determined need to show themselves in opposition to the large boys once more.

Daniel Farke’s workforce are flying within the second tier – they’ve received 6 in a row, and haven’t misplaced of their final 12 video games. They can even probably be extraordinarily assured that their high quality will carry them to automated promotion, so the FA Cup just isn’t one thing they’re trying to throw away – fairly the alternative actually.

And that’s earlier than you even get to their historic rivalry in opposition to us. We haven’t performed the Whites within the FA Cup for the reason that 1970 closing, probably the most notorious video games in English soccer historical past. It’s hardly a recent and open wound, however all that point has solely added to the buildup.

How will our gamers react to the defeat at Wembley? That’s one other thriller issue when predicting this recreation. They could possibly be impressed and motivated to return out and present all of the doubters that they’re unsuitable. However this can be a younger, inexperienced and doubtlessly mentally fragile group. They appear to essentially like Mauricio Pochettino, however is he going to have the ability to choose them up off the ground mentally after such an apparent bottling? It’s arduous to say.

This workforce is difficult sufficient to foretell at the perfect of instances – the dearth of a constant finisher means we go into each recreation not figuring out if it will likely be a stroll or a battle. And that goes for each recreation, whether or not we’re enjoying Middlesbrough or Man Metropolis.

So the concept that this isn’t a really even recreation is simply plain unsuitable. If we’re at our greatest, we should always have an excessive amount of for them. However how usually have we been at our greatest this season?