Hot on the back of Sunday afternoon’s FA Community Shield loss to Arsenal, Chelsea FC will take the field for their final pre-season fixture against Fiorentina on Wednesday night. This, in fact, will be the club’s first footballing commitment of the 2015/16 campaign at Stamford Bridge.
The Blues fell 1-0 to the Gunners in the traditional season opener at the weekend, in the process handing Arsene Wenger his first competitive win over Jose Mourinho in 14 attempts. After some terrible performances in the United States, the one at Wembley a few days ago was not that much of an improvement and Chelsea were nowhere near their best. Hell, they were so off-colour that it causes concern with the Premier League starting on Saturday.
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This all of a sudden makes the Fiorentina friendly an intriguing watch. The Italian side will provide the Blues with their last opportunity to reach some sort of acceptable from ahead of what will be a long and tiring season. With that in mind, here is all you need to know.
Chelsea FC v Fiorentina, August 5th
Venue: Stamford Bridge
KO: 8pm BST, 3pm ET
TV: Chelsea TV, Sky Sports 1 (UK), Fox Sports 1 and ESPN Deportes+ (US), check out your country’s local listings here
Several Chelsea players will be looking to atone for shocking performances on Sunday. Loic Remy is among them. The French striker put on a show that featured so many offsides that he was replaced by Radamel Falcao at half-time. Granted, this may have been Mourinho’s plan all along, but Remy certainly didn’t deserve anymore time on the on the pitch.
Cesc Fabregas will also be looking to find his passing range and accuracy having not quite clicked into gear yet. Eden Hazard too will look to be more involved than he was on Sunday. After scoring that wonderful goal against Barcelona in the States, he was rather anonymous against Arsenal which, although one shouldn’t read too much into it, is slightly disconcerting.
The game is sold out on general sale, but if you are attending be sure to get there by 7pm to welcome the players onto the pitch one-by-one. The club have organised a host of events pre-match so check them out here.
WARNING: It is unlikely that anyone who is going to the game and lives in London is not already aware, but there is a planned London Underground strike scheduled to start on Wednesday evening at 6:30pm. There will be no tube services across the network, and thus overground and bus services will be busier than usual. Be sure to leave in plenty of time and check out advice from the club here.
Chelsea FC Starters: Asmir Begovic, Juan Cuadrado, Kurt Zouma, John Terry (c), Ola Aina, John Obi Mikel, Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Bertrand Traore, Oscar, Victor Moses, Radamel Falcao
Chelsea FC Bench: Thibaut Courtois, Jamal Blackman, Branislav Ivanovic, Cesar Azpilicueta, Gary Cahill, Nemanja Matic, Cesc Fabregas, Ramires, Eden Hazard, Willian, Loic Remy.
Fiorentina Starters: Sepe, Alonso, Tomovic, Roncaglia, Gonzalo (c), Gilberto, Suarez, Vecino, Mati Fernandez, Rebic, Babàcar
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