Domestic football is almost back, and that is great news for all of us! My mood might soon change come the end of Saturday night when Chelsea play Arsenal, but right now, I am buzzing for Chelsea to play.
This week I am looking ahead to some key decisions that Mauricio Pochettino will be looking to make.
In this article, I am honing in on the winger options.
We will need to wait on Cole Palmer this week and see how his dead leg has settled down, but I don’t see it keeping him out of the squad altogether although Pochettino might look to start him on the bench as a caution. We have to wait and see, last I heard is they will assess him this week and see if he can train and what his condition is.
IF fit, our two best winger options right now is Raheem Sterling and Mykhailo Mudryk, as voted for by our community on my personal Chelsea website, Si Phillips Talks Chelsea.
- 52% of you selected Cole Palmer and Raheem Sterling as our best winger options.
- 23% of you selected Cole Palmer and Mykhailo Mudryk.
- 20% of you selected Raheem Sterling and Mykhailo Mudryk.
- 4% of you selected Noni Madueke and Mykhailo Mudryk.
I agree with the majority here, even though ideally, I’d much prefer to see Palmer operate more centrally.
I also love how Palmer and Madueke play together and linkup for the England U21s and think that could be devastating for Chelsea, but Madueke has a lot of work to do to bust into this starting lineup right now, unfortunately. That is more sentiment to how well the others are playing rather than Madueke, and that of course is great for us and long may that continue.
I don’t think you can even think about dropping Sterling right now after his all star performance against Burnley. And Conor Gallagher, Moises Caicedo, and Enzo Fernandez are obviously all going to start if fit, so Palmer has to go wide.
Mudryk of course almost joined Arsenal before he came to Chelsea, and seemed pretty keen on going there. So he will be eager to start this one. But if Palmer is fit, I just see it unlikely for Mudryk to start ahead of either of those two so he might have to make do with minutes off the bench only.