Possible Chelsea starting XI to play Steaua Bucharest

Jose Mourinho will play Juan Mata in the Champions League clash with Steaua Bucharest.

Let’s put the Tottenham match behind us and look forward to Chelsea‘s Champions League clash against Steaua Bucharest. The Blues travel to Romania to try and salvage their disappointing opening day defeat at the hands of Basel.

Chelsea’s league form is also not at its best with another stalemate against Tottenham that leaves them behind their London rivals at 4th place with 11 points. Jose Mourinho will have to seek this opportunity to the maximum to pick up all three points and kick start their Champions League campaign. The host themselves were on the wrong side of a 3-0 drubbing against Schalke on match-day one.

As far as the team news is concerned, Jose Mourinho has confirmed that Juan Mata will start against Steaua Bucharest following his heroic second half performance against Tottenham helping the Blues to secure a point. Mata assisted John Terry’s second half goal and the Spaniard worked tirelessly throughout the time he was on the pitch which was enough to grab Mourinho’s attention.

“I think this is the way players should say ‘I want to play’. “Today I played him for 45 minutes and I liked very much what I saw,” he said. “I have to follow what the players tell me on the pitch and today Juan told me.

The way he changed the team in the second half here makes me a very happy manager who can say 72 hours in advance that he will start against Steaua Bucharest.”

The only major injury concern that Mourinho has is the long term injury suffered by Marco van Ginkel but the plethora of midfielders who are at his disposal will mean that the Portuguese manager will not be short of options and will look to reshuffle his pack. Lampard, who started the League match, might be rested and Ramires after passing a late fitness test against Spurs might keep his starting place and so will Mikel.

As far as the other attacking players, Mourinho might go for Willian and Eto’o who were on the bench last time and rest Hazard for this one.

Here is a possible XI that Mourinho might opt for:

Here is an alternative line-up with Mata in the No.10 role, benching the Brazilian Oscar.