Preview : Chelsea vs Southampton

Chelsea's quest for consistency continues as they host Southampton this Saturday. The Blues' premier league campaign has been shaky of late, their start to the season was disappointing as they lost most of their games and won only a few. They seemed to be back to winning ways after they emerged victorious in the first fixture of the champions league group stages which was followed by a win over Arsenal and a 4-1 league cup victory over Walsall, but soon after that they drew with a floundering Newcastle United side before losing 2-1 to FC Porto in their second fixture of the champions league group stages which made it doubtful whether the side is back in the form that is required of them.

Southampton have been average in their performance. They are currently placed tenth in the table with nine points from seven fixtures. The Saints have been inconsistent in their performances in the same manner as Chelsea with the only difference being that Ronald Koeman's men have just been able to exceed Chelsea in terms of total wins and draws which is also justified by the contrast in positions of the two teams in the table. Southampton managed to secure a 3-1 win over Swansea at home last week. Ronald Koeman will believe that his side can pile more misery on Chelsea in order to find the same form that his men were in last year so that The Saints can get their season up and running.

Date : 3rd October
Kick-off : 5:30 PM GMT
Venue : Stamford Bridge

Form
Chelsea (all competitions) : LWWWDL
Southampton (all competitions) : LWDLWW


What the managers are saying 

Jose Mourinho : "We always try to do a little bit of rotation, which is important physically and mentally for the group, but there is also a part of the rotation that is because of the instability of the performances.

"If you play fantastically well for five matches, you get some stability in the team, you keep the core and you don’t change much. That’s normal. When there is some instability you try to find why the performance was better here and not so good here; why the player who made this mistake didn’t make another one. It’s normal.

"What we do is work when we can. We played Tuesday. Wednesday was more about recovering, but yesterday and today we worked, we analysed, we tried to make the best decisions. It’s normal to try and find solutions to win the next game."


Ronald Koeman : "I think we have to improve in our ball possession, in our defensive organisation. That’s what we talked about in the first weeks of the season.

"We made a lot of changes in one season, more than one year and out of those six or seven positions we now have four or five different players. That needs time and players need to adapt to the Premier League.

"We play better than we were at the beginning of the season. We play better and have more confidence. In the last two weeks we showed we are a clinical team. That’s good to see that the team is doing well."

Team News 

Chelsea goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois is out of the clash with Southampton due to an injury. Striker Diego Costa will serve the final of his three-game ban following FA's decision on account of Violent Conduct.

The Saints have no fresh injury worries as confirmed by Koeman while Jordy Clasie continues to recover from his injury as he gets closer and closer to make his return to the sqaud.

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