Preseason Rant: Chelsea vs. Aston Villa

By: Jamie | July 30th, 2011

Chelsea on a Saturday morning/afternoon (depending where you are). Just as it should be.

Somewhat sterner opposition awaits us today in Aston Villa for the Asia Trophy. Young Josh made his press conference debut yesterday, where AVB confirmed that he will play a part in the match today:

Petr Cech has also confirmed that he will be playing, so it will be nice to see him between the sticks again. Alex should be able to play a part as well. He is the only one in the squad who has not featured at all during preseason and I miss the big man. So will we see AVB’s preferred starting eleven today? Or some further experimenting? If you believe the man himself, the team will continue to be rotated:

“I think our objective is to finish as equal as possible in terms of minutes played to everyone, what we will do [against Aston Villa] we will continue to do against Rangers, distributing minutes so everybody feels in shape, and reinforce the principles we have been applying to training in a game situation.

‘It won’t be only about selection but spreading out the minutes, hopefully making the seven substitutions we are allowed, which was changed from five. It is important to give minutes to everybody before the start of the Premiership so these two last games we will have we will keep this.”

One more match in Asia and then back to Cobham. Come on Chelsea!