We have one match in the Premier League on Wednesday evening and it comes from Stamford Bridge where Chelsea will look to all but secure Champions League football next season when they play host to Arsenal.
Arsenal need to win their last three matches and hope results go their way to have a chance of making it into Europe next season but the way they are playing you would have to suggest that looks unlikely.
Where to watch
The match will be shown live in full on the Sky Sports Main Event and the Sky Sports Premier League channels. The build up to the game will begin at 7.30pm and the match kicks off at 8.15pm.
Chelsea
Chelsea will be all about winning trophies for the remainder of this month but the opportunity to guarantee Champions League football is unlikely to pass them by. The fact they can all but do that here might mean that Thomas Tuchel names a stronger side than he might otherwise have done less than 72 hours before the FA Cup final. In saying that, I don’t expect this to be the same Chelsea side that won at Man City at the weekend.
Chelsea have still only lost once in the league under Tuchel and that was on that crazy afternoon when West Brom put five past them after Thiago Silva had been dismissed early on. The one thing you could label at them is that they are not overly flashy or particularly exciting to watch but they have some superstar players who light matches up at the right time. The one thing the Blues certainly have is winning momentum.
Arsenal
The fact that even if they win out from here Arsenal will be relying on other teams losing in order to make the top seven, highlights perfectly how much of a struggle their season has been. If you were being kind to them you would call it a poor campaign. If you didn’t want to be so nice you would call it abysmal. Either way, they need to finish well to salvage something from it. A failure to do that could lead to big decisions being made in the summer.
For all the doom and gloom around Arsenal, they have only lost one of their last five matches in the Premier League but that was in a terrible performance against Everton and their Europa League exit was no better, especially as it was at the hands of a manager they discarded prior to appointing Mikel Arteta. Arsenal are actually unbeaten in their last five on the road in the league, a run which includes a win at Leicester and coming from 3-0 down to draw 3-3 with West Ham.
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Team News
Andreas Christensen will miss this match for Chelsea as he hasn’t recovered from the injury which he picked up against Manchester City at the weekend. He joins Mateo Kovacic on the sideline. Olivier Giroud and Tammy Abraham will be hoping to start.
Arsenal are hoping that Granit Xhaka and Pablo Mari will be available for them after they have missed out recently with injury. They will be without David Luiz though which is a blow. Emile Smith Rowe will be assessed ahead of the game.
Betting
I don’t expect Chelsea to name a full strength line up here but the 11 men who do take the field for the Blues should be good enough to overcome a pretty disappointing Arsenal side who just can’t seem to find a special performance from anywhere. It might be that a London derby inspires them but if you think back to matches against Tottenham and West Ham on the road, they were terrible in both matches so if we’re hoping that will give them inspiration we might be barking up the wrong tree.
I’m not expecting to see Chelsea at their best here three days out from an FA Cup final but they are defensively sound and have the options at the back to rotate without losing too much emphasis in what they do well, and whichever attacking players they select should be good enough to get the job done here, and if they’re not I’m sure the likes of Mount, Ziyech, Pulisic et al will be on the bench and will come on late on to get the job done if needed. This all looks like yet another low scoring Chelsea win in what is becoming the norm for them with 11 of their last 12 wins coming with less than 3.5 goals.
Tips
Back Chelsea to win and under 3.5 goals for a 3/10 stake at 2.35 with Coral
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