Key events
7 min We’re all wondering how Forest will fare this season – can they maintain their level without the elements of surprise? Well, Chris Wood has put them ahead against Brentford, a goal we’ve been shown by Sky, who now have permission to screen every 2pm kick-off. This is a good development, or would be were it not for all the bad things that come with blanket telly coverage.
6 min A break in play as Richards and Gittens have clashed. Both should be fine.
4 min Again, Cucurella wins the flick at the near post – Palace have to sort that, Cucurella is shorter than my 11-year-old daughter – and Sarr eases Fernandez out of it, deploying just enough force to ge tit done and not quite enough to risk sanction.
3 min James swings in, Cucurella flicks on at the near post, how is Wharton allowing that?! The ball loops towards the far post, where Sarr is forced to nod behind for a corner from the other side; it yields another, Wharton’s defensive work sloppy once more.
2 min “It may well be that Eze agrees with you re a move to Spurs,” says Dave Dudding. “Suspect he (and Palace) will hold out for as long as possible to see if Arsenal make a move. And that would be worth his while.”
Meantime, Gittens wins a corner off Richards; first chance for Chelsea to make something happen/
1 min A very nice first “action” from Achemampong, dropping a shoulder to cary out of defence and pass into midfield. He’ll feel better for that and, we can be very sure, he’s already never felt better.
1 min Away we go, Palmer insouciantly knocking the ball back to Sanchez. I hope this is not a portent.
A silence for Diogo Jota and Andre Silva. Go well, boys.
“I do get your point on Eze and it’s quite spot-on,” writes Karen Asad. I like him so much that I keep hoping at least Arsenal come up with an offer and snap him up. That’s closer to a big club move than moving to Spurs. I also hoped United would accept Saudi offer for Bruno and replace him with Eze. That would have been fantastic!”
I love Eze as a player – he’s such an artist – but I’m not certain he’s quite good enough to be a main man in a side challenging for the biggest trophies. I would, though, enjoy seeing him try.
Did Enzo Fernandez hit a new level during the summer? I’m not certain I’d be picking him if Romeo Lavia was fit, but that’s not a regular occurrence and I felt he was beginning to find a way pf balancing defensive and attacking responsibilities without the elite athletic ability to make that much easier.
Our teams are tunnelled and here they come!
“Not sure I can get behind all your preamble thoughts on Chelsea,” chides Scott O’Brien. “Yes, mid-season Chelsea were sterile and lacking in character but early season and then the close-out have been pretty good – you get the feeling that they are learning to shift between risk-averse possession football and the sort of fast, transitional chaos that they had at the start of the season and in the close of the previous season under Pochettino.
In terms of outstanding players, I think that Caicedo and Palmer are in that bracket, James is there when fit and firing. If the qualification is 3/4 in a good team, then I reckon that’s close to Arsenal (Rice, Saka, Saliba, Raya) and City (Haaland and … some unproven but exciting additions, like Chelsea). Liverpool more clearly established (Alisson, Van Dijk, Mac Allister, Salah). That’s why 3rd or 4th seems a sensible prediction, but could push on.”
I’m interested see how Palmer goes this season – I know he was brilliant in the CWC final, but I’m less certain his maverick tendencies and out-of possession work meld that well with what Maresca wants. I agree on Reece James, but that comes with the if of fitness but also the fact that he’s a right-back and there’s only so much difference he can make to a game, and I like Caicedo but is he really one of the top five in the world in his position? I’m not sure he’s even top 10.
Photograph: John Walton/PA
It is somewhat strange to hear Chris Sutton complain – stick with me! – about Nicolas Jackson not being a good enough centre-forward for Chelsea. The comparison: one goal in 28 games versus 24 goals in 65 games.
Email! “I can’t agree with your view that Chelsea aren’t good enough to win the title,” offers-out Rick Harris. “They were good enough to win the Club World Cup and Estevao looks some player, while they have a lot of squad depth as well. You can point at any of the likely contenders and ask, what happens if Van Dyck gets injured, or Haaland suffers a season ending ACL rupture, or Arsenal have significant injuries to any number of players like Saka, Rice or Gabriel. Chelsea look like they still have money to spend so a few more players may be incoming to add to what already looks like a strong squad. I’d put them right up there as likely PL champions.”
I think winning the CWC will be a problem too, as I mentioned in the preamble, and i also don’t think Chelsea would’ve won it had all involved taken it as seriously as they did. But more than that, I don’t see a player, bar Cole Palmer, good enough to win them games they might otherwise draw or lose.
Glasner speaks to Sky, saying it’s easy to manage the players despite the success as they’re a great group, so they celebrated on Sunday, then got back to it on Monday.
Eze’s frame of mind is very good, which is why he’s starting, and says the situation offers good advice for the kids watching: “don’t believe everything you read in the newspapers”.
I am far form certain anyone who could legitimately be described as a kid even knows what a newspaper is.
Looking at the teams again, I also wonder if Palace might look to put Marc Cucurella under pressure. Munoz and Sarr have built a really good partnership down the Palace right and look to have the edge over the Chelsea left-back both physcially and athletically.
Where is the game? Chelsea will, I imagine, do what any side faced with a back three should try to do: target the space behind the wing-backs and down the sides of the centre-backs. As it happens, Munoz and Mitchell have the legs to get back in, but if they’re overloaded with the full-backs, they won’t find it easy.
I also expect Chelsea to win the midfield numbers game, but Palace’s formation almost invites them to – the question really is how they cope in transition, because Eze, Sarr and Mateta will be primed for exactly that phase and, with Adam Wharton looking to feed them, there’s every chance they get some joy. I’m also certain Jean-Philippe Mateta will look to isolate Acheampong and get into him physically, while also running channels.
So what of Eze? Taking the money out of it for a second, part of me wonders why he’s leaving. If he was going to one of the top clubs to challenge for the big pots, fair enough. But at Spurs, he’ll get one season of Champions League, probably no more, and perhaps a Cup run, whereas if he stays, he could become Palace’s greatest player. If he was three years younger, fair enough, he could go to Tottenham then leave, but at 27, this is it for him, and I’m not sure what he’s getting beats what he’s leaving.
Otherwise, a general rule of thumb is that to win the title, a team needs three or four players who are among the best around, I don’t see that at Chelsea, who have lots of good players but not many – if any – special ones. Of course, they have several who can grow into that, I just can’t see them having more points than everyone else after 38 games, even without the summer workload.
I’m really looking forward to seeing how Andrey Santos, Jorrel Hato, Tyrique Georrge and Esteêvão develop as the season progresses. But the XI that start today is save the centre-back situation, Maresca’s best. So, is it good enough to win the title?
My sense, pretty emphatically, is no. I’ve not forgotten the state of Maresca’s football through much of last season. In particular, his satisfaction with how they played in losing at Arsenal was troubling – they went a goal down early and barely bothered to try retrieving it, passing backwards and sideways to retain possession that didn’t threaten the opposition goal. So when, at full-time, Maresca suggested all was fine, I checked in with my uncle, a season-ticket holder at Stamford Bridge, who complained that it’s always like that – no risk and no zest.
And while I do, we’ve also go this going on for you:
Anyroad up, I’ll write these teams down, then we’ll wonder what they mean.
Headline Palace news: Eze starts, which suggests the deal with Spurs has stalled. Otherwise, Will Hughes replaces Daichi Kamada, but they are otherwise unchanged from the side which won the Community Shield.
He admits its’s been difficult with the short break but says it’s been a good break. Otherwise, he hopes to have Tosin for the next game, and in the meantime is sure Acheampong can improve. It was a difficult but nice choice to make between Pedro and Delap, but there’ll be plenty of games for both.
Though he’s spent big on strikers and won’t complain if one scores 30 goals, the team are set up to share them around, with all players given licence to get involved in the place.
Let’s start with Chelsea, for whom the headline news is the presence of the 19-year-old Josh Acheampong in the centre of their defence following the serious injury sustained by Levi Colwill and in the absence of Tosin. That’s a huge vote of confidence for him – less so for Wesley Fofana, left on the bench.
Otherwise, it’s João Pedro up front, with Liam Delap on the bench, but here’s Maresca so let’s go to him and come bac kto what he’s done.
Teams!
Chelsea (4-2-3-1): Sánchez; James, Acheampong, Chalobah, Cucurella; Caicedo, Enzo; Neto, Palmer, Gittens; João Pedro. Subs: Jorgensen, Gusto, Fofana, Hato, Essugo, Andrey Santos, Estevão, George, Delap.
Crystal Palace (3-4-3): Henderson; Richards, Lacroix, Guehi; Munoz, Wharton, Hughes, Mitchell; Sarr, Mateta, Eze. Subs: Benitez, Clyne, Sosa, Cardines, Devenny, Rak-Sakyi, Lerma, Esse, Edouard.
Preamble
Happy new season one and all – except for our teams today, the last one never really ended, and for the best possible reasons.
Chelsea finished its domestic aspect in form that was just good enough, qualifying for the Champions League and perhaps saving Enzo Maresca’s job in the process. After that, though, things really got going.
It’s easy to say that Chelsea were fitting winners of the first Club World Cup, bringing together, as it did, geopolitics posing as sport, Saudi money, US imperialism, far-right dictatorship, and ersatz, artificial prestige. But it’s unlikely the players are giving this any thought, instead captured by their growing sense of mission: an entity that once looked atomised, incoherent and disconnected has since fused into a definitive whole, the team secure in the knowledge that they can out-think, out-play and out-fight the best team in the world in a big final. They will feel invincible.
But so too will Palace, their players and manager already legends and the two greatest games in their history the last two they’ve played. It is not just that they beat Manchester City to win the FA Cup, their first trophy, then Liverpool to win the Community Shield, their second, though they did. It is also that they did both in dramatic, affirming, inspirational manner, delivering a buzz to sustain all involved for the rest of their lives. They will feel invincible.
Life being life, though, with triumphs comes pitfalls. By the time Chelsea beat Paris Saint-Germain in mid-July, their rivals had had a month or so off and already started pre-season, an unhealthy and borderline barbaric state of affairs that will surely exact a toll at some point. The mental and physical stress of elite-level sport is real, not something that can or should be overridden with money, glory and team-spirt. There is a debt to pleasure and in their case it will be fatigue – the only question is when it hits and how they manage it.
Palace, meanwhile, are victims of their own success. Eberechi Eze, their best player, looks likely to leave for Spurs, while Marc Guêhi, their captain, could well be off to Liverpool. With under two weeks left in the transfer window, simply replacing them will be difficult, never mind replacing them with players of equivalent ability, and even if that happens, those players will need nurturing and moulding – or, in other words, rather than build on their achievements to get better, it is more likely they are poised get worse. There is a debt to pleasure and in their case it will be pillaging – the only question is how they mitigate it.
All of which makes this an absolute banger of an opening-weekend fixture. Bring it on!
Kick-off: 2pm BST
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