Chelsea have once again faced Manchester City in a domestic cup competition, in the same round, in the same season.
The FA Cup third round is usually a golden opportunity for Premier League clubs to sleep with some youngsters and use some fringe players, but I’m not so sure Graham Potter is now!
That’s because we’ve been drawn against reigning league champions Manchester City again. The same team that knocked us out of the third round of the League Cup. Imagine that? What are the possibilities?
It really does seem like the world is stacking up against Chelsea getting the exact same draw in the same round of both domestic cups this season. Chelsea also play Manchester City AGAIN just two days before this FA Cup tie, in the league. Oh!
We really could have had a good cup run with Graham Potter this season, couldn’t we?
But Blues fans are already beaten, and you can fully understand why. Belief and confidence are very low at the moment due to our poor run of performances and results before the World Cup break.
However, there are some positive aspects, and we can analyze them. For starters, if we’ve already written ourselves off, the media will have written it off as well, and maybe we can calmly go about our business as losers and pull off an upset. There will be no pressure.
We mentioned City’s game against us the week before, and they have a very difficult schedule around the FA Cup game, so we might see more of their stars rested than they normally would for us.
The other plus point is that if the inevitable happens and we’re out of the FA Cup in the third round (our first round) then at least we’ll clear up some match congestion that all the other top clubs will go through, that could be a big plus point, right? Allow us to fight harder for the top four and qualification for the UCL, as well as the UCL itself?
Nobody has expectations of the game and maybe that will work in our favor. Maybe we can do something here. Maybe I’ll wake up now.
