Chelsea have a chance to put right a couple of wrongs from Sunday’s draw with Manchester United pretty quickly as they make the short trip to Watford on Wednesday night.
It’s the start of a brutally busy run of matches for Thomas Tuchel and his players as they will play ten matches in all competitions in December, kicking off at Vicarage Road and going as far away as Russia.
Tuchel will certainly have to make use of all of his players he will have available as rotation will be needed across an incredibly hectic period of games coming up.
That could start as early as Wednesday as Chelsea travel to the Hornets, who sit 16th in the standings and have lost three of their last five games under former Blues boss Claudio Ranieri.
On paper, it is a game that Chelsea should be winning and winning comfortably at that but, as we know, nothing is a given in the Premier League.
The Blues appear to have come through their 1-1 draw with Manchester United on Sunday unscathed but will be without Ben Chilwell and most likely Mateo Kovacic too for the Watford game.
N’Golo Kante is in a race against time to be fit having missed out at the weekend through injury but with such a busy time ahead, Tuchel will not want to rush his influential midfielder back to action too quickly.
So, with that in mind, where could he make changes?
If they will be anywhere then it’s likely to be in the front three. Hakim Ziyech, Timo Werner and Callum Hudson-Odoi all struggled in the United game.
Hudson-Odoi has started the last eight matches in all competitions, Werner is only just back from injury and Ziyech is still struggling to find consistency.
Romelu Lukaku came off the bench for the final ten minutes against United for his first outing in six weeks and Kai Havertz was an unused substitute after a hamstring issue.
Those two could be pushing for starts and so too could Mason Mount, who has been on the bench for the last couple of games as well.
Christian Pulisic is another player pushing for a start. He got one against Juventus in a false nine but was quiet in the 4-0 drubbing of the Old Lady.
In defence, Kante’s potential return is likely to be key if Tuchel is to make any changes. If he’s not fit then it should be Jorginho and Ruben Loftus-Cheek lining up in the middle of the park.
The defence picks itself these days though Tuchel might be tempted to hand a rest to Thiago Silva.
Andreas Christensen has found himself relegated to the bench thanks to the form of Trevoh Chalobah in recent weeks and would be the obvious replacement there.
Thankfully for Tuchel he does have a big enough squad to be able to cope with ten games in 31 days and playing matches pretty much every three days from now until the turn of 2022.
