Chelsea start their premier league season today (Sunday) against fellow-blues Birmingham. Jose Mourinho does not have the full squad at his disposal, but the situation is lot better than the FA Community shield match, both in terms of opposition and in terms of players available. A win or draw would give us a tremendous record in the history of English league football.

As regards the injury situation, there is some kind of unclarity and there is also lack of information about who is available and who is not. Players who are surely out for tomorrow’s match are Terry, Ballack and Bridge. Drogba and Shevchenko may not be 100% ready for tomorrow but it appears Sheva has a better chance of making it than Drogs.

I expect Jose to play 4-4-2 if Sheva or Drogba is available, collectively for 90 minutes. Otherwise, he can play 4-3-3 with Pizarro supported by Malouda and Joe Cole. For a three-man midfield, we have Lampard, Essien and Sidwell and if it’s 4-4-2, we can have wither Malouda or Joe Cole playing in the side midfield area.

chebir-120807.jpg

In defence, we have Ricardo and Alex in the centre, Ashley Cole and Glen Johnson on either sides. I’d prefer to see Johnson on the right because he has been playing fairly well and if he is not going to be played at home against Birmingham, I don’t know when he can play. I don’t consider him to be a back-up player or something. He can claim his stake for the right back position as much as Paulo or Diarra, until Alves arrives.

As you see, we have plenty of options in defence, midfield and the wings. We are vulnerable only in the striker/centre forward area. If Pizarro pulls a muscle or has a real bad day, we’d be in trouble. As long as Pizarro plays for all 90 minutes, I don’t think we should have a problem. Drogba will be missed but that’s fine. If we can’t beat Birmingham at home without Drogba, then we can’t be title contenders.

As you might be aware a draw or a win today would be a great historic achievement for Chelsea as we surpass Liverpool’s record of unbeaten home league streak. And one man who can play a major role in helping us achieve this feat is Petr Cech. Hope he has a great confidence-boosting match before he travels to Reading where skull was split into two in the last season.

petr-cech.JPG

Cech talks to BBC Sports about Chelsea’s style of play:

In the end what counts is points and trophies. If you play beautiful football and finish fourth like Arsenal then it is maybe nice to say you played brilliant football but you never have a trophy. Personally you don’t want that to happen and your fans don’t want it to happen either because everyone wants the trophies and the glory. You need resilience too. Even when you don’t play well and have problems or injuries you need to keep winning and hopefully that is what we can do.

We have always tried to be as attacking as we can be but last season part of the problem was that we had won the title twice. Everyone coming to Stamford Bridge just put 11 people in front of the penalty area and were just defending, defending, defending. When you don’t have the space to attack every time you have to be patient and wait for the chance. It happened a lot last season but hopefully it will be different this time.

We should certainly attack Birmingham relentlessly. In the first half, we should do our stuff and really try to scare them a bit, instead of waiting for the second half or their goal to spur us up. Frankly, Birmigham have nothing to lose. For this season, as per their expectations, this may not be one of those matches where they expect to get point/s. Still , if we rattle them a bit, who knows, may be the flood gates will open.

I feel we have to start playing with some kind of arrogance too. Many times, we have been guilty of respecting our opponents too much and struggling to force the issue later on. Birmingham should be treated as Birmingham and nothing more. Do you know that the last five premier league matches were draws (and still we lost the title by only 6 points). Let’s get out of this streak of draws which is under Mourinho, Chelsea’s longest winless streak.

jose_bruce.JPG

Jose has made it clear that we would be more interested to get three points than setting this record. Here is what he say:

If we draw I think we shouldn’t celebrate. In spite of the draw giving us a historic record, I think we shouldn’t celebrate because we don’t play for records we play for titles. I know one point against Birmingham is better than zero, but our target is not to beat the record, it is to win the game.

On their side, Birmingham are also missing two of their defenders and their captain Johnson too. I think it’s all even then – we missing our strikers and they missing their defenders. And yes, Forsell would be facing his earlier club in a very important night. Surely, they would have been motivated by Sunderland’s win against Tottenham and Derby’s draw against Pompey.

Staying with the results in day one of the premier league, Liverpool got the job done as late as possible, Sunderland justified the hype around them by beating Spurs with a goal scored few seconds before final whistle, Derby threw in the other surprise by holding Pompey, Man City finished off West Ham in style, Newcastle raised a lot of expectations by crushing Bolton at the Reebok stadium and Blackburn, Everton notching up victories over Boro, Wigan respectively.

Back to our match – no disrespect to Birmingham, but it just looks like a 2-0 to me, a regulation win.

[tags]Chelsea, Birmingham, Premier League, Jose Mourinho, Liverpool[/tags]