Frank Lampard is competing with the ambition of winning the Carabao Cup but does plan to make changes for the third round tie at Bournemouth.
The Blues boss said a number of squad players were fighting for inclusion and that several may get their chance to show him they deserve to be playing more regularly. That opportunity is particularly important with question marks over the fitness of Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Amadou Onana and Idrissa Gueye for the Premier League tie against the same opposition at the weekend.
Yerry Mina is among the senior players in contention for a start along with Mason Holgate, James Garner, Tom Davies and Abdoulaye Doucoure. A number of the Under-21s may also feature in the squad, including Stanley Mills, Tom Cannon and Reece Welch.
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Speaking ahead of the first of two trips to the south coast in a week, Lampard said of the Carabao Cup: "I will definitely take it seriously and our plan is to try and win it, simply. But also, I see a lot of managers get questioned when they change their team for these games but when you work day-to-day with 20+ players and a lot of them work very, very well and don't play so regularly, you do try and find moments to give those players who are training well a game. [It] is important for the squad so I think it's a balance of trying to give those players minutes to show you they deserve to play more so we will certainly take it seriously."
Mina could get his first minutes since he was injured in the opening game of the season against Chelsea, while Mason Holgate could also feature for the first time since his injury at Brentford. Ben Godfrey, the third of the centre backs to suffer a serious injury at the start of the campaign, is not expected to feature before the World Cup break, however.
Lampard said the disappointing result and performance against Leicester City on Saturday would not change his approach to the fixture. Asked whether there were any squad players who were particularly deserving of an opportunity to start, he said: "There are some players but I don't want to name them because it might be taken that the other ones aren't doing it, but there are some players. It's an important point because we have had a fairly regular starting line-up now which is a good thing for consistency and results, we have seen that from probably where we were last year, you can form relationships on the pitch.
"But at the same time, the players who aren't in, their job then is to perform and train at a top level to change your mind, get them in and give them a chance, that is a massive thing and players must keep training at a high level. It's not easy that one but they have to do that otherwise their time stays out of the team so that's one we try and push. It's our duty, it's our job to support them, to show we are trying to improve them all the time, and their job to show us they deserve to play."
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