Chelsea-Brentford is a match for the 33rd day of the Premier League and is played on Wednesday at 8:45 pm: TV, predictions.
It’s late April and Brentford, despite having played one more game, has a five-point lead over Chelsea. Stuff that if they had told us at the beginning of the season we would have taken it for a joke. Indeed, no one last summer could have imagined such a bad – indeed, disastrous – season by the Blues, who with seven games still to play are stationed in the right side of the Premier League standings, even closer to the relegation zone than fourth place.
The decision to exonerate Graham Potter and replace him with someone who knows the environment as well as Frank Lampard so far has not paid dividends. Not only has Chelsea with the former captain on the bench yet to win, they have lost all four matches played. The Londoners hardly saw a ball against Real Madrid in the Champions League, who beat them both in the first leg and in the return with a 2-0 result, while in the league came two defeats its two against Wolverhampton and Brighton. The offensive numbers under Lampard’s management, in perfect continuity with the previous one, are pitiful: in four games Chelsea has scored barely a goal, in the match against De Zerbi’s Seagulls. Hopes of retaking Europe in extremis are fading day by day. To understand it better, the Blues are called upon to recover a beauty of 11 points over seventh place, the one that will almost certainly mean Conference League at the end of the season.
Only three have scored less than Chelsea
Only three teams have scored fewer goals than Chelsea – 30 in 31 Premier days – and all three happen to be in the middle of the relegation zone.
Some Brentford players
With Europe now out of reach, all Lampard has left to do is to end the league in a dignified manner, avoiding further humiliation. After “resting” over the weekend due to the postponement of the match with Manchester United (engaged in the FA Cup semifinal), Chelsea welcomes fellow citizens Brentford to Stamford Bridge. The Bees after three consecutive defeats last Saturday slowed the run of Unai Emery’s Aston Villa, stopped at 1-1 at the Community Stadium thanks to a goal by the usual Ivan Toney, in his 19th goal of the season. Thomas Frank’s men have not won in six games but are one step away from their best finish in the top flight: in the London derby against Chelsea they have a chance to consolidate 10th place.
The prediction
Brentford away is less fearsome and has conceded goals in nine of the last 12 matches played away from their home crowd. Numbers that give little hope to a Chelsea that with Lampard on the bench has only lost. This time the Blues should find their way to goal, but it is not certain that the Bees will be able to snatch at least a point.
The likely Chelsea-Brentford lineups
- CHELSEA (3-4-3): Kepa; James, W. Fofana, Silva, Chilwell; Kante, Fernandez, Kovacic; Mudryk, Havertz, Felix.
- BRENTFORD (4-2-3-1): Raya; Hickey, Mee, Pinnock, Henry; Jensen, Janelt, Dasilva; Mbeumo, Toney, Damsgaard.
POSSIBLE RESULT: 1-1
