Chelsea to host Brentford FC in the FA Cup fourth round
By George Perry
After defeating Peterborough on Sunday, Chelsea advanced to the fourth round of the FA Cup where they will take on Championship side Brentford FC.
Chelsea will host Brentford the weekend of 28/29 January. Brentford are currently in 14th place in the Championship.
The last time Chelsea and Brentford met was in the fourth round of the 2012/13 FA Cup. Oscar and Fernando Torres scored in a 2-2 draw away. The Blues then ran rampant in the replay, winning 4-0 at home. Before that cup tie, the two sides had not played each other since 1950.
Brentford will be a perfect opponent for the lineup Antonio Conte deployed Sunday against Peterborough. Brentford will be another physical and determined opponent, offering Michy Batshuayi another chance to prove his development and readiness for the English game. It will also give Nathaniel Chalobah and Ruben Loftus-Cheek another change to go beast mode on a scrappy lower-tier team, as they did against The Posh.
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League Two side Plymouth Argyle may have done Chelsea a solid by holding Liverpool to a scoreless draw this weekend. The replay will be on 17 January at Plymouth. This further congests Jurgen Klopp’s schedule in the run-up to the no-exaggeration-would-be-enough fixture against Chelsea on 31 January.
Liverpool face Southampton this Wednesday and again two weeks later in the EFL Cup semi-finals. Along with their Premier League fixtures and the FA Cup replay, the Reds will play six matches in the 23 days before hosting the Blues. If Liverpool prevails over Plymouth Argyle, they will play a seventh match the weekend before Chelsea go to Merseyside.
As The Blue Lions podcast pointed out, Jurgen Klopp will most likely continue with the heavy squad rotation for all of the cup tournaments this month. He made 10 changes to his Premier League squad to face Plymouth, and paid the price for it. But the league title implications of the Chelsea match will be the determinative factor in his lineup choices.
Even so, any amount of travel, disruptions to training and the prospect that Klopp will need to bring on his stars to see out the game all accrue to Chelsea’s benefit. After drawing to Plymouth Argyle, Klopp will struggle to blame his woes on the Blue’s comparatively light schedule.
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