According to Google Maps, you can drive from Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge to the Brentford Community Stadium in just under 15-20 minutes without traffic. You can walk it in about an hour, 45, as the two sites are just under six miles apart.
Yet, due to the tiers of English football in which they reside, meetings between these two west London clubs have been few and far between. Saturday will mark the first league meeting since 1947 and only the 17th ever all-time.
Brentford v Chelsea FYIs
Kick: 5:30pm, Brentford Community Stadium, West London, UK
TV: NBC
Chelsea Starting XI Prediction: go here
Premier League Preview Podcast: go here
Head to Head: Chelsea wins 8, Draws 4, Brentford wins 4
Chelsea FC Team News
We’ll go bad news first here, Romelu Lukaku (Belgium) and Antonio Rudiger (Germany) both missed their respective nation’s second matches this international competitive period due to overwork.
Both could miss out on this one due to fatigue reasons.
Central defender Thiago Silva will likely miss out due to his country, Brazil, staging their next match too close to kickoff, in terms of getting back on the other side of the world in time, and ready to play. (Amazing that we even have to write sentences like this).
Christian Pulisic missed out on international duty with the USMNT for the October period, having injured himself during the September internationals. He hasn’t featured for Chelsea since before two international breaks ago.
However, he was there to support his New York Jets, when they took on the Atlanta Falcons, at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this past Sunday.
He’ll be back in the mix soon, but likely not here. The good news is that N’Golo Kante has resumed training, having recovered from contracting covid-19 and Reece James has convalesced fully from his ankle issue.
Prediction: Chelsea 2, Brentford 1
While we are BEE-lievers here at this website, we just don’t believe, strongly enough, they’ll pull off the upset here.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “Transatlantic Passage: How the English Premier League Redefined Soccer in America” and “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated and the Chicago Tribune.
He co-hosts the After Extra Time podcast. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.
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