Chelsea - Liverpool: Combined XI

Goalkeeper: Petr Cech

Though Simon Mignolet has proven a largely reliable addition to Liverpool’s first team, Cech’s authoritative showings have just edged the Belgian’s so far this term.

A brief shaky spell at the star to the season prompted whispers of decline in some quarters, but subsequent form has proven these to be premature. Has generally been his steady self, and has needed to be behind a back four that is rather more pourours and changeable than Stamford Bridge has become used to over the last decade.

Right-Back: Glen Johnson

Johnson has been far from his athletic, penetrative best in recent weeks, but he remains a crucial member not just of Liverpool’s back four but of the entire side.

He comfort in carrying the ball forward is key to the success of Brendan Rodgers’ style of play – especially when Daniel Agger is absent from the defence – and his capacity to cut inside when he storms forward, as well as overlap, adds an unpredictable edge to his attacking play.

Centre-Back: John Terry

Enjoying a so what’s unforeseen Indian summer since Jose Mourinho’s return, Terry has been the most reliable of an oddly leaky Chelsea back line.

Ever-dominant in the air, deceptively classy on the ball and once again a genuine goal threat from set-pieces, Terry’s recent rejuvenation owes much to his manager’s reintroduction of the deeper-lying, more reactive style of defending of which Terry is one of the most masterful proponents.

Centre-Back: Martin Skrtel

Yet another player who was effectively written off only a few months ago, yet has gone on to be one of the season’s standout performers. Despite spending the summer reportedly being offered around the continent before losing his place to Kolo Toure for the opening two games of the campaign, Skrtel was reinstituted into the side for the victory over Manchester United on September 1st and has only missed 19 minutes of league football since.

While the form and fitness of Daniel Agger, Kolo Toure and Mamadou Sakho has fluctuated somewhat (though the latter looks better with each starting appearance), Skrtel has remained the lone constant in a back line (be it comprised of three, four or five men) whose make-up has been anything but. His brainless habit of wrestling, as opposed to marking, opponents at set-pieces seems as though it will be an eternal Achilles heel.

Left-Back: Cesar Azpilicueta

Having spent a good few weeks performing the unexpected feat of displacing Ashley Cole in Mourinho’s preferred line-up, this season could be said to have been something of a breakthrough one for a player who, only a few games in, was already being spoken of as a failed acquisition at Stamford Bridge.

He did undergo a similarly impressive spell last term, under the guidance of Rafa Benitez, but that was short-lived and whether he can keep such form up for a truly sustained period remains questionable. Nonetheless, Azpilicueta is quick, athletic and technically solid; the fact that he has both attempted and completed a greater amount of tackles than Cole this term is a telling statistic, while his aerial supremacy will always play well with Mourinho.

Central-Midfield: Frank Lampard

Lampard has needed to, if not quite reinvent, then strongly readjust his playing style across the last couple of seasons, as the non-stop energy upon which his goalscoring prowess was firmly grounded has gradually ebbed away. To his immense credit, he has remained a key player for his side despite his ever-more creaking limbs, with his passing from deep having improved by necessity as well as design.

Lampard’s distribution will never display the probing subtlety of a Scholes or the sheer iron-fisted thrust of a Gerrard, but the Chelsea man’s ball-retention under pressure is marginally better than his Liverpool counterpart’s, even if it does lack the penetration.

Central-Midfield: Jordan Henderson

Unfairly lumped in with the disastrous signings of Andy Carroll, Stewart Downing and Charlie Adam upon his arrival on Merseyside, the truth is that Henderson has always showed maturity and promise for Liverpool, even if he has frustrated as much as he has impressed.

This season, though, the ex-Sunderland man has quite simply been a revelation. It has already become a cliché, but Henderson has quite clearly taken on extra responsibilities during the recent absences of Steven Gerrard and Daniel Sturridge, both in terms of tactics – adding rangy passing and lung-busting forward runs to his game – and simply sheer personality, and the midfielder has shone as brightly as anyone (well, almost anyone) throughout his side’s impressive recent displays at White Hart Lane and the Etihad.

That he has laid on two goals with backheels in recent weeks says everything for the joy and self-belief that Henderson is currently playing with, and it is a much-deserved and long-awaited period of imperious form for a player who has been unfairly written off – both by those in the stands and by the man in the dugout – since his high-profile move to Anfield.

Attacking-Right: Oscar

The most understated of Chelsea’s much-vaunted trio of creators, but maybe, just maybe, the most rounded. Oscar is already far more consistent than Hazard, despite being marginally younger, and possesses a level of high-pressing defensive application that Juan Mata, who lack the Brazilian’s sinewy physicality, seems to fall just short of.

That he was trusted, as a 21-year-old import and by two different managers, to take part in 64 games for Chelsea over the course of last season speaks volumes for not just his technical abilities but also his physical and mental resilience.

Attacking-Midfield: Philippe Coutinho

Still yet to recreate the show-stopping form that he produced at the back end of last season, Coutinho has nonetheless been a quietly vital cog within Liverpool’s newly glistening attacking machine.

He is still benefitting from last term’s form, as defenders now noticeably fear Coutinho – and rightly so, too, given his equally keen aptitude for each of the three basic attacking options: pass, dribble or shoot.

He still has a frustrating tendency to hurriedly scuff his longer-range efforts but has nonetheless opened the scoring in the two best games of the season so far – away to Everton and Manchester City. Some of his recent link-up play with Luis Suarez and Raheem Sterling has been genuinely undefendable, and has deserved more than it has reaped.

Attacking-Left: Eden Hazard

Surely it is a matter of time until Eden Hazard makes the transition from an occasional match-winner to a regular one. Blessed with guile, vision, balance, and just the right amount of overconfidence, Hazard has all the hallmarks of a world-beating attacker-to-be.

Still only 22, he can be forgiven for not having produced his best football consistently and, especially, on the big occasions – though Sunday’s visit of Liverpool could help to reverse that trend.

His display in his side’s 3-2 voctiry at the Stadium of Light was pure majesty – reminiscent of Cristiano Ronaldo at his single-handedly match-winning Premier League best – and though Mourinho is not one to instinctively indulge Hazard’s sort of impulsive talent, one would hope that the manager can make an exception in this case.

Striker: Luis Suarez

On current form, simply the most joyously exciting footballer on the planet. Leading the line for a side incomparable with the continent’s best and playing within an intensely competitive league, Suarez is currently replicating the goal-getting productivity of the likes of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo but without the robotic, routine nature with which those two go about their weekly business. Never before has a player married efficiency and exuberance at the level Suarez is currently showcasing.

Of his contemporaries, only Zlatan Ibrahimovic can match Suarez’s capacity for never-before-seen innovation at the top level (think back, for example, to his shoulder-control against Newcastle last season). He has also, at long last, shed the overly selfish, tunnel-vision-for-the-goal element to his play which dogged his early months at Anfield – and it has, ironically enough, been this newfound penalty-box calm which has not only reaped greater rewards for his team-mates, but for himself as well, with his decision-making in front of goal having gone from forced to completely natural, and utterly ruthless.