Looking for a little bit of drama tonight? At 7.30pm on ITV, it’s time for a visit to Coronation Street. Then at 8pm on BBC1, catch up with the young rapscallions who attend the Waterloo Road comprehensive. And finally over on BBC2 at 9pm, a new sci-fi thriller, Michael Portillo’s Great Continental Railway Journeys, in which a man bravely struggles with, but is eventually overpowered by, a primary-coloured sports jacket.
Not so much going on over at Sky Sports 1. That’s the channel broadcasting Chelsea’s Champions League match at Maribor. This, surely, won’t offer too much theatre. Chelsea are the form team in England, unbeaten all season in all competitions, and only denied a full house of wins by three of the biggest clubs in Europe: Schalke, Manchester City and Manchester United. Tonight’s Slovenian opponents, by comparison, have lost three of their last five matches, and one of those was a 6-0 spanking at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea’s biggest victory in the Champions League. Jose Mourinho may shoogle his starting XI around this evening - Brendan Rodgers doesn’t have exclusivity on making the odd change - but whichever line-up he selects should prove strong enough to claim the win that would, providing Schalke beat Sporting Lisbon in the other match, be enough to advance the 2012 champions into the knockout stages.
Maribor will take succour from a decent Europa League record at home against English sides. Their first encounter was with Birmingham City in 2011, a 2-1 defeat. But since then they’ve held Tottenham Hotspur to a 1-1 draw in 2012, and last year beat Wigan Athletic 2-1. They’ll also be hoping that young Luka Zahovič, the 18-year-old son of Slovenia’s Euro 2000 legend Zlatko, adds to his eight-goal haul so far this season. But a win or even a draw may be a pipe dream, if the one-sided nonsense in west London last month is anything to go by. The bottom line for Maribor is to make sure, come 10.30pm tonight, their heaviest home defeat in Uefa club competition is still the 4-0 spanking Lazio gave them back in the 1999/2000 Champions League group stage.
That jacket, though. It’s wearing him!
Kick off: 8.45pm at the Stadion Ljudski in Maribor, 7.45pm back in London.
