It’s going to take a bit until Chelsea FC get all their summer transfer window additions and young attacking talent coalescing together and realizing their full potential. It wasn’t until this past Saturday that they finally all featured together at the same time.
When they are fully in sync with each other, and firing on all cylinders, it will certainly be needed, as we saw on Saturday. If No. 1 Edouard Mendy is out, well, Chelsea simply cannot rely on Kepa Arrizabalaga right now. So the primary selection issue for tomorrow night, at home against Sevilla in the UEFA Champions League group stages is, who will be in between the sticks?
Sevilla at Chelsea FC Champions League Group E FYIs
Kickoff: Tues October 20, 8pm BST, Stamford Bridge, London
TV: BT Sport 3 (UK)
Streaming in USA: CBS All Access, TUDNxtra (in Spanish) and fuboTV (in Spanish)
Team news for both sides: go to this link
Mendy is an injury doubt for this one, and after the terrible mistake Kepa made on the first goal conceded to Southampton on Saturday, we’re thinking Blues boss Frank Lampard might just have to go with Willy Caballero instead.
Central defender Kurt Zouma also made a bad mistake that made him largely responsible for a goal on the weekend. Thus, we drop him in our first team prediction. The rest of predicted XI is really pretty straight forward.
Chelsea FC Predicted XI vs Sevilla FC (4-2-3-1): Willy Caballero, Reece James, Andreas Christensen, Antonio Rudiger, Ben Chilwell, Mateo Kovacic, N’Golo Kante, Kai Havertz, Christian Pulisic, Timo Werner, Tammy Abraham
Prediction: Chelsea 3, Sevilla 2
Expect Lamps to get this group, largely reliant on a core of high-flying attacking players in the their early 20s, to get fired up and respond with authority here.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “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, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.