To summarise the last day activity for Chelsea – no Dani Alves, no Ronnie and Glen Johnson out. Now that the transfer window is closed with not much flutter, we can resume club football with our teams as they are. We travel to Villa park, our bogey ground of late. I’m getting bored of not getting three points at Villa park. We can win at Mestalla and not at Villa park? This needs to change, on Sunday.

Before go on talking about the match, my sincere regards to Glen Johnson and I wish him all the best wherever he is. He was a good young player but it was obvious that he is lacking the Chelsea class and consistency. Hopefully, he plays well for Pompey match at Ashnel-Grave on Sunday and make Arsenal lose some points.

You might know that Lampard is injured and he won’t be available for some time. I cannot really guess how much this ‘some time’ will be, but it appears that it could be more than 2 weeks. That should bring in Mikel alongside Essien in the central midfield. Malouda is little doubtful but something tells me that he would play. On the right, once again it should be SWP. There are rumours about Joe Cole not being happy about being benched. Like Clarke says no one’s gonna be happy when they are left behind, Joe Cole is no exception.

I haven’t seen any signs that there is bad feeling. Joe has trained very well and at a club like Chelsea, you have accept there are times when you are not going to be in the team. We would be very disappointed if the players when not selected weren’t unhappy. They all want to play. So Joe is happy but by the same token there are other players – Steve Sidwell, Claude Makelele – they are all unhappy when not selected so it is a normal situation.

Attack should be Drogba and Pizarro with Sheva making a 20 – 30 minute appearance in the second half. It should be Ashley Cole and Belletti as full backs with Alex and Terry in the centre. It’s better to play Belletti as he gets familiar and comfortable so that he can look forward to the bigger matches to come up.

Villa park has this dubious distinction of the only ground in England where Jose has visited and failed to win. I cannot stand another heartstopping 0-0. Last season, we played our best football with about 24 shots or something. But this time, I like to see us convert some of them and in our fourth match of this league, we should also come out with a clean sheet.

Earlier, the champions league draw was not quite kind for Chelsea. We have Valencia, Schalke and Rosenborg. Some see this as the toughest group but I think this is a fairly balances group. For a team of Chelsea’s calibre, this draw should be a positive one. Generally, there are no easy groups/matches in champions league, but have a look at the groups of Arsenal and Liverpool and compare it with how Rafa conveys this.

Back to our match. I see a 2-0 win for us – Malouda and Drogba could be the scorers. We need to win at Villa park as the rest of the big four have fairly easy matches. On Sunday, I’d be back at my home sweet home in India. BlueChampions should be back to its best.