Looking forward: Newcastle & Leicester, A pivotal week in Chelsea's season

This week makes or breaks the rest of our season and ultimately Poch's job.

Good Afternoon Ladies and Gents,

I have been doing a lot of looking back this week with our ‘Cobham Kids’ & ‘Throwback Matches’ series’ on this site, now its time to look forward an on to our next two matches.

This next week is the most pivotal week of our season, we are currently 4 points behind Newcastle with a game in hand, they currently occupy 8th position and with the other teams around us all having the opportunity to put the pressure on both sides will be eager to win this, if Newcastle win we will be 7 points behind them with a game in hand and 11 games remaining, if we win we are a point behind them with a game in hand and gives us some momentum.

Including this game we play 4 of the other 6 teams that are fighting for 6th/7th position alongside us, with 3 of those 4 games being at The Bridge, win those games and we give ourselves a massive boost and massive chance of qualifying for Europe.

We need to be something that we haven’t been all season against Newcastle and that is quick ‘out of the traps’ fast paced and high intensity from minute 1, we all know how good the atmosphere is at the bridge on a night game if the players get the crowd riled up from the very 1st minute. Don’t let them settle on the ball and make their defence feel uneasy, they are very fragile defensively and some early mistakes could see the gates open for us.

Newcastle do have the majority of their key players back available with just Pope, Joelinton and Wilson the long term absentees, Kieran Trippier has now also been ruled out of Monday nights game, seeing ex-Blue Tino Livramento more than likely filling his boots at right full back. Lewis Hall is ineligible in the PL to face us.

Our injuries seem to be mounting up again Ben Chilwell (knee) and Levi Colwill (Toe) are injured and will miss the game whilst Conor Gallagher is a doubt with a virus. This will probably see Marc Cucurella return to the starting XI after featuring on the bench last week and being back in training for the last 3 weeks, if we continue with a back 3 I imagine Thiago Silva will return, if we play with a back 4 I would guess to a Chalobah & Disasi partnership.

This is a big chance for us to boot the door down in the race for European football and really lay down a marker to the other 6 times fighting for those 2 positions.

On to Leicester and The FA Cup, it is must win, simple as that. They are a very very good side there are no bones about it, with a lot of PL quality players in there, they are on good form (ish) and have good momentum but Chelsea have to win this game.

The FA Cup resembles an excellent opportunity not only to get to Wembley again or to win a trophy but also to qualify for Europe. There are some excellent teams still in the competition but with 4 of the favourites all playing each other Chelsea could capatilise on that.

We need to get behind the team and the manager and help them through the next 2 games, our season and European qualification are defined by the next 2 games in my opinion, winning both would leave us with an excellent taste in our mouth going into the international break!

Thanks for reading

Luke Rushbrook