Bournemouth vs Chelsea – Team News: Cole Palmer starts with striker dropped | OneFootball

Chelsea face Bournemouth at Stamford Bridge in just over an hour, and the teams are in!

Here are the full team line-ups for Bournemouth vs Chelsea (kick off at 15:00 GMT)

CHELSEA:

Chelsea’s team to take on Bournemouth,

So it’s an interesting setup from manager Enzo Maresca.

As we thought might happen, with Moises Caicedo suspended the strength of Reece James is used in midfield, with Malo Gusto sticking at right back. Wesley Fofana and Trevoh Chalobah are restored to central defence.

Poor Marc Cucurella is being worked to the bone, and continues at left back. In midfield, Enzo Fernandez plays alongside James, with Andrey Santos benched.

That creates room in the attack for the returning Cole Palmer to play in the hole. He’s flanked by Pedro Neto and Alejandro Garnacho out wide.

We questioned whether it would be Liam Delap or Joao Pedro who was dropped for the returning Palmer. Neither is in the best form, so it could have gone either way, but ultimately Delap’s hard running keeps him in the side.

There is a lot of pressure on all our attackers to perform now Palmer is back – there are a lot of combinations for Maresca to try out now he has his star man back. This should be an open game against an attacking Cherries team, and hopefully that leads to a good spectacle.

In other news…

Our predicted XI for the game had Cole Palmer missing out on a start, despite Enzo Maresca saying he’s ready for that role… that shows what we know!

Liam Delap is the player who could move out of the team for Cole Palmer, and that’s a move a lot of fans would support. His manager made a defence of him in the press conference yesterday, saying he was sure he would start scoring soon.