Chelsea host Manchester City on Sunday with their squad stretched and their Premier League form still far from steady. They have won just one of their past six league matches, and the latest reset after a four-game losing streak came only last weekend, when they thrashed Port Vale in the FA Cup quarterfinal.
That win offered relief, but it did not hide the scale of the challenge now facing Chelsea. Reece James, Trevoh Chalobah and Levi Colwill are all out injured, while Enzo Fernández is unavailable after being suspended by his employers over comments linked to Real Madrid transfer speculation. Mykhailo Mudryk is also suspended after failing a drugs test, and Jamie Gittens and Filip Jörgensen are expected to miss out through injury. Robert Sánchez is set to start in goal because Jörgensen is injured, and Malo Gusto is expected to fill in at right back for James. Few changes are anticipated from the XI that beat Port Vale, with Marc Cucurella and Moisés Caicedo the only expected alterations, and Estêvão is expected to start again after his display last time out.
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For Chelsea, the visit of an in-form City side comes at a time when they have been wildly unpredictable for much of the season and are trying to keep their Champions League qualification bid on track. The problem is that their defense is already described as stretched for the game, which leaves little margin for error against opponents who have been much more reliable. The pressure now is not on whether Chelsea can produce a performance in patches, but whether they can do it for long enough to make Sunday count.
