Hurrah! We’ve got an away match here! I’m truly relieved to play an away match. It’s like saying I’d rather be at my in-law’s place than be home. Strange but true now. It’s all in the hope that West Brom wouldn’t want to disappoint their home fans by ultra defensive football. One day, the away teams will get a bit pragmatic and think ‘let’s put men behind ball and get a draw’. Until then, I’d love to see us playing away.

Not until a month back, we were boasting about our home record and funnily we are on course to an away record now. We have now won 11 matches on the road and with this one, we would have created premier league history. How times can change!

Starting with the bad news. We won’t have Drogba because of silly, childish act of stupidity. Only he can score a brilliant goal and follow it up with a no-brainer like that. That was Drogba for you in 2 minutes. Being so instinctive, passionate and revengeful is very much him but if that’s going to cost the team, I care a damn about his personality. He’s just come from an injury break. He knows we don’t have too much of attacking options because Scolari does not think beyond Anelka. We have some key matches (I’d always say this) coming up including the one against the Ladies Club (I’d always say this too!). Forget about FA punishing him, Chelsea FC should be punishing him with a fine or something for that kind of behaviour. I only hope that no case is filed against him with the police. What a mess he’s left himself in! But, let me tell you, it was some goal from Drogba. I lovvved it.

Let’s keep Drogba’s action out. To throw stuff at players is a very disgusting gesture from the fans. These are all unfair disturbances and things like coins could be terribly harmful. I don’t know if they’ve identified the guy who threw the coins, yup not just one coin. By punishing Drogba and not punishing the fan that threw the coins, FA would be sending out a very wrong message to all football hooligans. What they’ll be telling them is, do whatever you wantt, to unsettle the players, you’ll go scot free while the player gets a death sentence. Let’s admit it, if Drogba hadn’t not thrown back that coin, we would probably not been talking about the fans thowing the coins too. Because a fan throwing the coin is not as spicy a news as Drogba throwing it back at them.

Scolari does seem to believe in mixing up the starting line ups or throwing a surprise once in a while. He goes with what he considers as his best line-up and he does not change this line-up. May be it takes few months of poor performance for players to drop out of their assured first team place. Truly, we are seeing an ‘untouchable’ culture while it’s not being pronounced explicitly. The only times the line-up changes is when there are injuries, suspensions etc. Other than that we don’t see someone being given a chance as part of a rotation or something. I don’t like rotations or substitutions for the sake of it but certainly there were many opportunities in this season so far, where we could have tried many players.

We will be missing Alex and Belletti for this match. Franco, Ricardo and Joe Cole are also out. It appears that Ballack and Ashley Cole might make sub appearance. But anyway the team’s going to be awfully predictable I guess, partly due to Scolari and partly due to injuries. Cudicini, Ivanovic, Terry, Bridge, Bosingwa, Mikel, Lampard, Deco, Malouda, Kalou and Drogba. I’ll pleasantly surprised if Scolari makes even one change from this line-up. To be honest, Deco has been poor. I’d have no problem in playing anyone else there. Stoch? For 30 minutes, if not a start? Similarly, there is no awful harm in starting Sinclair in place of Malouda. it’s hard to be worse than Malouda nowadays. If I’m going to play the above back four plus Petr Cech, I’d even rest Mikel and bring on Mineiro. When we have this back four plus Cech playing against West Brom, Mineiro can surely play. Scolari might even play both Drogba and Anelka in a 4-4-2 and that would be interesting!

By the way, Lampard is the premier league player of the month. Thoroughly deserved award. I’d put my money on Lampard becoming the Chelsea player of the year and if Chelsea win the title, probably the premier league player of the season. We have many examples of players relaxing and not giving their best once they get a fat contract. Lampard’s story is quite the opposite.

Last match was a freak result but Burnley played with vigour. Their players played at Stamford Bridge with no fear. That was also down to the fact that we didn’t bother to really turn up. Barring a few, we wanted to win by not going to the third gear. That’s an art mastered by Jose Mourinho. His Chelsea were able to play in first or second gear and still win matches and when required, within the same match they were able to shift gears with ease depending on the situation of the match. I’m afraid that ‘game intelligence’ seems to be missing often nowadays. Good part of it should come from the manager in terms of change of tactics and substitutions which will force the players to do something new. Scolari has given the players all the freedom to express their natural talent and creativity but this is the other side of it. With more creativity comes less discipline and pragmatism.

I hope West Brom comes out and plays football. Because that’s our best chance to score and win. If they plan to defend doggedly to get that single valuable point against a top four team, we’ll not only have a job to do, but also a point to prove. We need to have plans and manouvres to unlock defences. When you play a deep defending team, the important weapons in your armoury can be long shots, long balls and set pieces. Unfortunately, these seems to be the neglected areas in Scolari’s reign.

I know Belletti scored one from outside but I believe he went by his instincts and not instructions. We should lay off more in front of the box for our long shooters to unleash their wicked shots. We should try those occasional long balls too. By long balls, I don’t mean those Bolton-like ‘hoofs with a hope’. I refer to picking out our target striker to hold up or to earn a free kick in a dangerous area. Anelka seems to use his body well. If he can score with his thigh, he should be able to control the ball with his chest or head. We should work more on the corners. I see us wasting corner after corner which is simply a crime. If we get back to form on long shots, long balls and set pieces, you can break any resolute defence, especially like one that of West Brom.

I think it could be a 3-0 for Chelsea. Because it’s reaction time! That’s our loop, right? You draw a match and show a reaction, you lose a match and show a reaction. So in that tradition, we are due a reaction for the Burnley result. The ‘reaction-match’ happens to be an away match. So I’m quite bullish about a 3-0 result for us.