Chelsea: Three things to look for ahead of a bounce-back at Bournemouth

Chelsea and Bournemouth both come into Saturday’s game looking for a pick-me-up after recent form. Here are a few things to have in mind heading towards kick-off.

Let’s just forget Tuesday ever happened and pretend that the last time we were all together was last weekend against Tottenham. If only Chelsea could play Tottenham every week, this season would be a lot easier. But they can’t, so now they face Bournemouth. At least the Blues will be away from home.

1. From League One to Premier League bogey team

Many people celebrate how quickly Eddie Howe moved Bournemouth up the pyramid of English football and then established the Cherries as a Premier League regular. Chelsea have less to celebrate from Bournemouth’s rise, as they have become a bogey club for the Blues over the last four years.

Since Bournemouth came into the Premier League in 2015/16 the two clubs have met nine times. Chelsea have won five and lost four. Only Manchester City have beat Chelsea more times in that span (six). Manchester United and Liverpool have also defeated the Blues four times. Only Liverpool, Manchester City, Manchester United, Everton and West Ham have taken more points than at Chelsea’s expense than Bournemouth.

The Blues lost their first Premier League game against Bournemouth, and three of the last four. In this fixture last season, Chelsea lost 4-0, presaging the 6-0 defeat to Manchester City 2 weeks later.

Maybe since Chelsea got their crushing defeat out of the way earlier in the week, their won’t be any doom left for this game.

2. Will Frank Lampard start preparing for the trip to Bayern Munich?

Frank Lampard used the same starting XI last weekend against Tottenham and on Tuesday against Bayern Munich. He has not shown much inclination to rotate his squad for rest and recovery purposes, so if he thinks that XI is the best XI, they will play in whatever condition they are in.

However, if he wants to make a better showing at the Allianz Arena than he did at Stamford Bridge, he’ll need to start planning now.

The Blues will not have Jorginho and Marcos Alonso for the second leg of their Champions League tie. Jorginho will sit out with yellow card accumulation, and Alonso will miss through his straight red. Both could use a rest, and both have deputies who have not seen much game time recently and should not make their first competitive appearance in a month or more in Munich.

Assuming Lampard stays with the 3-4-3, he will need to play either Emerson at left wing-back or Fikayo Tomori or Kurt Zouma at centreback so Cesar Azpilicueta can take the left flank. Tomori, in particular, has been unusually absent in the last month. No one has said anything about him being injured and was one of the Blues’ best players for much of the first half of the season. The centrebacks need refreshing and rotating, so he and Zouma both should be in contention.

Billy Gilmour has yet to play with the first-team since the oddly formal announcement that he would be training full time with the first-team. Apparently one can train full time with first-team but still play with the development team when not on the bench with the senior group.

The reverse leg against Bayern is essentially a dead rubber, the kind of game where in years past people would say the manager should “play the youth.” Playing the youth was a way of life this season until the last three games saw a jump in experience and age in the squad.

With so little on the line and with Gilmour at least as mature as Jorginho, who earned his suspension in one of the most amazing cases of the “Nobody… Literally nobody… Absolutely literally nobody…. Jorginho” memes when he confronted the referee on Tuesday, it would be a perfect opportunity for Gilmour to make his Champions League debut and maybe put one foot in the regular XI.

3. Options up top

Tammy Abraham reinjured himself during the post-game session on Tuesday. Even if he is cleared to play, his and others’ recent experience point to it being a bad idea to put him in the game, let alone the starting XI.

Olivier Giroud obviously maintained his fitness and match readiness during those long months off the pitch. Two games in four days should not be a source of concern for his loading levels or fitness, but it’s worth considering that he has played over one-third of his minutes for the season in those four days.

Frank Lampard has to decide if he is going to trust Giroud as entirely as he once trusted Tammy Abraham until Abraham returns to the lineup. Lampard changes his mind deliberately, slowly but firmly. He may not make a decision for a while, but when he does he will not flip-flop. If he goes back, it will only be after some time and some cause.

It’s hard to imagine, then, that Michy Batshuayi will displace Giroud from the starting XI in Abraham’s absence, neither for tactical nor rotation purposes. But if Giroud is the sole striker until the original sole striker returns, then Lampard is once again keeping the squad dependent on a single point of failure.

At least Giroud has the physiological foundation and professionalism to be able to come back from an extended manager-imposed absence and play as he did against Tottenham. Batshuayi has not shown that.

If Lampard pushes Giroud until Giroud joins Abraham in the physio room before Abraham can join Giroud in the squad, Chelsea will be dependent on Batshuayi or whoever shows up as Frank Lampard’s first false-nine in the starting XI.