Paul Merson has made his weekly pre-match prediction ahead of Chelsea’s upcoming league fixture.
Chelsea return to Premier League action on Monday night when they make the short trip across London to take on Crystal Palace.
For the Blues, they go into the next game fresh off back-to-back league defeats. In fact, they conceded eight goals across the two results and slipped into the bottom half of the division table.
Mauricio Pochettino’s side may be able to take some confidence by the way they dispatched Aston Villa on Wednesday night with a 3-1 away win in the FA Cup, though. We’d argue it’s the team’s best performance of the season so far.
Paul Merson has tipped Chelsea to pick up a comfortable away win at Selhurst Park, especially as Palace have injury problems to key individuals.
Michael Olise, Eberechi Eze and Marc Guehi have all been ruled out of Monday through injury, as confirmed by Palace’s official website.
“Chelsea are a really young side – the average age of the starting XI that beat Aston Villa in the cup was 23! This is what you’re going to get from a bunch of young guns – inconsistency is guaranteed. They got absolutely slaughtered by Liverpool and Wolves but a week later, they played arguably their best football under Mauricio Pochettino in the FA Cup win against Villa,” Merson told Sportskeeda.
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“In the league, you need to be consistent over 38 games, which is why Chelsea have struggled this season. However, in the domestic cups, you just need to be a better team on the day, so I think Chelsea will go far in the FA Cup. They are already in the Carabao Cup final, indicating that they are very much a cup team, like Arsenal was in 1993 when I was part of the squad.
“Eberechi Eze and Michael Olise are set to miss out for Palace, so I see nothing but a Chelsea win.
“Prediction: Crystal Palace 0-3 Chelsea.”
Crystal Palace vs Chelsea
It looks like a good time for Chelsea to play Palace, but let’s not forget how poor we’ve been in the last couple of league fixtures.
Hopefully, Pochettino’s side can repeat the kind of display they put together a couple of days ago in the FA Cup.
Our hope is that the Blues head coach sticks with the same starting line-up, barring any injury problems.
