Chelsea need all the points they can get, trailing Manchester United by three with one less game to play.

Given their need, you’d think that 3 points would be the only satisfactory result from the Emirates on Monday.

Fueling that notion is that Arsenal haven’t beaten Chelsea in 11 tilts, with Chelsea winning 2-0 at the Bridge in October and 0-3 at the Emirates last season.

After last week’s postponement, the healthy players should be fresh and rested. Lampard will have had two weeks of training plus a reserve match. Terry’s buttocks will have had more strengthening to support his nervy back. Malouda will have had a rare breather. The only scratches will be Alex, Zhirkov, Bosingwa and Benayoun.

With all of that going for them, the demanding fan might be disappointed with anything less than a victory.

But is that a reasonable expectation?

Arsenal are stronger this year than last. Yes, they once again disappeared in a big match against Manchester United. But overall they’re playing with more certitude and belief.

And they’re at home.

I’d have to say that in the short term, getting a single point would be hard to accept. Watching ManU sail away after a probable win over Sunderland won’t be easy.

But remember that this is one of the toughest fixtures of the season. Getting a point away to Arsenal is a good thing in the larger scheme of things.

So much as I’d like a victory, to me the only truly disappointing result would be a loss. I’d settle for a single point, move on with the season and be done with one of Chelsea’s strongest rivals.

UEFA’s financial Fair Play regulations, set to begin in 2012, are intended to be the fiscal salvation of European football.

In principle, clubs won’t be able to spend more than they make. The intention is to discourage overspending that leads to bankruptcies such as Portsmouth’s.

Sounds good, right? But maybe it’s not.

Some of the consequences can be foreseen.

Clubs with a big stadium and a large revenue stream will dominate. Both domestic leagues and the Champions League risk becoming even more predictable than they are now. They could all end up like La Liga, where revenue distribution guarantees that Barca and Madrid are always on top.

But that only affects top clubs with billionaire owners, I hear you saying.

Think again.

There’s an unintended consequence to Fair Play. We’re seeing it already. And its victims are Europe’s smaller clubs.

Historically, a significant amount of young talent is discovered and nurtured at small clubs. As part of the process, the club’s fans get the pleasure of watching the player turn into something special. With luck and achievement, the club’s gate revenues increase. And when the player’s ready for the big time, the club makes a tidy profit selling him.

Win-win.

But not anymore. Listen to Feyenoord sporting director Leo Beenhakker:

“What can you do? English clubs are the great white sharks of football. Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea are all in the game. It’s obviously bad news for Feyenoord… We can’t do anything about it if a foreign club comes up to sign one of our youngsters. The Premier League clubs spoil the market with their behaviour. Other clubs in Europe aren’t doing this kind of thing, but the English sides just don’t care.”

Beenhakker’s complaining about Chelsea poaching 15-year-old defender Nathan Ake. He’s angry because Chelsea are snatching Ake away before Feyenoord have ever realized the benefit of having a young talent. No fan excitement. No handsome transfer fee after a few years of developing him. Just 300 grand and a thank you m’am. The same thing happened to French club Lens when Chelsea took a shine to Gael Kakuta. And Anderlecht can hear a Roman toe tapping as he waits for Romelu Lukaku.

I’ve got bad news for Beenhakker. It’s going to get worse. Because other ambitious European clubs will almost certainly follow in England’s footsteps as Fair Play begins to bite.

If the clubs with limited revenue streams but great aspirations can no longer spend madly in the transfer market, their only survival strategy is to buy cheap young talent by the bucketful and see who develops into a first-team player 5 to 8 years later. It may take more time, but it’s less expensive and it’s sustainable.

Unfortunately, it absolutely cut the legs out from the smaller clubs who in the past benefitted from the occasional cash injection of selling a rising star.

In a Fair Play future top clubs will perpetually trawl the leagues with vast nets, sweeping-up any youngster who shows the least bit of promise. Thus leaving the small clubs perpetually down on talent, down on excitement and never truly rewarded for finding good young players.

It seems entirely plausible that the unintended consequence of financial Fair Play will be to victimize football’s most vulnerable citizens… its small clubs.

After a drawn-out negotiation that threatened to see him leave the club, Gael Kakuta has signed a new 4-year deal with Chelsea.

He’s only 19, so this is a good sign for the future. He’s shown some energy and creativity around the sides of the box in his handful of appearances this season. One hopes that as he matures he’ll become a dangerous attacking midfielder.

Another rumor’s floating around which, if true, worries me a bit.

The rumor is that Chelsea are pursuing Luka Modric, Tottenham’s playmaker. Love his skill, that’s not the problem.

But his size is. He’s only 5’8″. Same for Gael Kakuta. Recent new addition Ramires is said to be 5’11″ but as we’ve seen he has a slight build and is easily shoved off the ball.

So the concern is that Chelsea are adding players who are small. It’s been a Chelsea trademark since the Mourinho days to be big and strong. No-one pushed them around. But these new players are getting smaller. I’m not sure that’s a good thing in the EPL.

Sure, Barca are fairly small, but La Liga is a clean, technical league. They don’t get the roughhouse treatment of a typical English league match. One wonders how long they’d survive if they had to endure an EPL season?

So it’s something to keep an eye on for the future.

One other note: Florent Malouda has opened his mouth wide and stuck his foot in it. He says the recent slump is down to the defence conceding more goals.

Two problems with that. One, Malouda himself is not an eager tackler and isn’t the best at covering back. And two, Chelsea have only scored 4 goals in their last 7 matches. None from Malouda. So, not exactly a spot-on observation.

This reminds me of the last time Malouda delivered a pearl of wisdom. Shortly after transferring to Mourinho’s Chelsea, he complained to a French newspaper that he was surprised at how crude Mourinho’s tactics were.

He survived that one and grew as a player and he’ll survive this one too. But I sure do wish he’d keep his opinions to himself!

We’ll have a preview of the Arsenal match later this week. See you then!

Chelsea’s postponed match against Manchester United is a good news/bad news scenario.

The bad news is that Chelsea already have fixture congestion and a make-up game won’t help. A thin squad doesn’t need several weeks of two-games-a-week.

Also, it looked like Chelsea had found something in the 2nd half against Spurs. This might have been a good time to play United.

But maybe the good news outweighs the bad.

It’s an additional week of rest and recuperation for Frank Lampard and John Terry, as well as Zhirkov and Bosingwa. It won’t help Lampard’s endurance but the extra training might help him regain his touch.

And it couldn’t come at a better time, as the fixtures come thick and fast starting next Monday. Away to Arsenal, followed 2 days later by home to Bolton, then another 4 days and home to Villa and then another 4 days and away to Wolves, another 4 days and the FA Cup draw against Ipswich Town.

For those of you scoring at home, that’s 4 matches in 14 days. Phew! A real endurance test for Chelsea’s aging stars. So a mini-break before it begins can’t be a bad thing.

And league leaders Manchester United now have 2 make-up games to jam into their schedule, so they have it even worse than Chelsea.

One final thought: with Chelsea showing signs of life, might not Arsenal be a better next opponent than Manchester United? It’s away, of course, and that makes it much tougher. But tactically Ancelotti seems to have found something that works against the Gooners. And like Spurs, Arsenal are prone to giving teams room to operate. A recuperating Chelsea evidently thrive on a bit of space in the midfield.

No-one likes to see a huge match like this postponed. But if it’s going to happen, overall it seems to me that in this instance the good news outweighs the bad.

Sunday’s match at Stamford Bridge may decide Chelsea’s title hopes this year.

Strong words, with 22 matches left in the season.

But Manchester United are currently 3 points ahead of Chelsea with a game in hand. That game is away to Blackpool, a fixture they’re expected to win. If United beat Chelsea on Sunday and eventually convert against Blackpool, that would be a 9-point gap.

While everything’s possible in a topsy-turvy season in a weakened Premier League, it might be asking too much of a thin Chelsea squad to overcome 9 points with almost half a season played.

So it’s vital to Chelsea’s campaign that they eliminate United’s 3-point lead and trim the likely eventual deficit to 3, a much more manageable number. Even a draw brings it down to 5.

Thankfully, there is some good news. Frank Lampard’s back. He survived unscathed a 60-minute practice match on Thursday and is good to go. And United haven’t won in 8 trips to Stamford Bridge, their last victory being a 0-3 final in 2002. Last year, Chelsea won this fixture 1-0 on November 8th.

And there may be more good news, if Ferguson decides to play it safe. On Tuesday we discussed what formation Manchester United are likely to use. Last weekend they strangled Arsenal by packing the midfield and playing a solo striker. And that’s exactly the formation that’s given Chelsea fits over the last month-and-a-half.

But maybe a 5-man midfield is bad luck for Manchester United against the Blues. If a ManU poster to ESPN’s Soccernet is to be believed, United have a losing record when they play cautiously.

“The last 3 times that we have played a 4-5-1 against Chelsea we have lost, however the last 3 times that we have played a 4-4-2 against Chelsea, we have won.”

I can’t vouch for that statistic, but if true it’s interesting.

Predictably, Ferguson is applying the screws before the match. Only Jose Mourinho can match him for pregame rhetoric aimed at unsettling his opponent. This time, he told an interviewer on Sirius satellite radio that Chelsea let too many players go in the off-season without adequately replacing them. This stings mostly because it’s absolutely true. The economy drive at Chelsea has clearly weakened the squad.

But let’s not end on a down note. Instead, here’s a look back at happier times, last season’s tilt at the Bridge.

Go you Blues!

Celery, Celery,
If she don’t come,
I’ll tickle her bum,
With a lump of celery.

Player notes:
1/ Interesting interview with Ramires on Chelsea’s website. The upshot is that he feels his game is coming around and that as he slowly learns English he’s feeling more settled in England. He thinks his best games were last week against Spurs, and earlier contests away to Newcastle and home to Arsenal.

2/ The squad sheets come out Friday evening. It will be interesting to see if either Bosingwa or Zhirkov’s name is on it.