It’s an interesting selection from Pochettino. He gives Mykhailo Mudryk a start for the first time, preferring him to Cole Palmer. So far in his time at Chelsea, Mudryk has been all pace and no trousers. Maybe this is a sign that Poch is expecting to play on the counter.
He is short of options in midfield as Moises Caicedo is unfit, which means a first PL start for Lesley Ugochukyu, the 19-year-old French-Nigerian who has made a couple of appearances off the bench. If you were Andoni Iraola, who would you be wary of in that Chelsea XI? Perhaps only Enzo Fernandez and Raheem Sterling.
A tweet comes in from Brendan Large, speaking for the Chelsea faithful. “I would just like to highlight one success so far,” he says, “in terms of our summer business. Gusto at right-back looks a real talent and a more than able back-up to Reece James. At least here we can say we have improved after the ageing Azpilicueta was let go.”
Afternoon everyone and welcome to … what, exactly? If you look through the lens of the past decade, this is a mismatch: a little club welcoming a big one. Seen through the lens of the past year, it’s too close to call: the 16th-best team in the league playing host to the 14th-best.
Bournemouth v Chelsea has often been the sort of encounter in which the home team are happy with a hard-fought point, but not right now. If you look at meetings between the big eight – the usual suspects, plus Newcastle and Brighton – and the other 12 Premier League clubs, there have been only three games this season that produced an upset and two of those have involved Mauricio Pochettino’s Chelsea. They lost to West Ham and Nottingham Forest, which suggests they are quite capable of losing today.
Bournemouth’s results have been more logical. They have been beaten by the big clubs (Liverpool, Spurs) while drawing with the rest (West Ham, Brentford). Andoni Iraola has yet to chalk up his first league victory, although he would have had it at Brentford, a difficult place to win, had it not been for a supreme piece of skill from Bryan Mbeumo in the 93rd minute.
It’s Chelsea, still reeling from their own shopping spree, who really need a win today. If they get it, they will skip up the table to eighth and the pressure will be off Pochettino. If they lose, Chelsea will slide below Bournemouth, leaving Poch in crisis corner with Erik ten Hag.
It’s all quite intriguing. Kick-off is at 2pm and I’ll be back soon with the teams.