PRE-MATCH BRIEFING: CHELSEA V WEST HAM UNITED
TACTICAL BRIEF
Former Blues winger Clive Walker played in four east-west London derbies, winning two and losing two. Here he assesses how Chelsea might make capital gains and three crucial league points.
Key battles
'Thursday night ended on a high, much like the Man United cup game before it, and it would be nice for the players to go off to their internationals with another good result under their belts,' he says.
'West Ham will be another tough nut to crack. They will come and defend.
'It's always a big game with an edge to it. I'm sure the West Ham players are appreciative they have had extra rest time over us, but sometimes it works that you can have too long to think about a derby, you can dwell on things and get worried.
'Away from home and they have taken a few beatings - they were taken apart by Arsenal and lost 5-1 after opening the scoring. It's important we draw first blood. We need to have our most dangerous players in top gear very quickly on Sunday.
'West Ham's last match was a win at Stoke and it was a scrappy, long-ball affair. Sam Allardyce was obviously determined to make his side more mean and solid because he wants to edge towards that all-important Premier League survival. Even the Hammers fans would say the champagne football can wait for a while.
'We were the only team to have won at the Britannia before their 1-0 there, and any team has done a good job going to Stoke, keeping a clean sheet and winning as they did.
'Big Sam is likely to set them out the same way against us, as a 4-5-1 with Andy Carroll the big target man. He may be missing a few of his more creative players such as Joe Cole, Mark Noble and Kevin Nolan, so they might be even more no-nonsense and direct.
'Jack Collison knows where the goal is but he'll be trying to hit it to Andy Carroll at every opportunity.
'Chelsea will definitely have to work hard to deal with Carroll, who has been a thorn in our sides in the past. It's a matter of creating the right intensity, being patient and persistent and taking the game to them on the deck.
'They're not a typical Big Sam side in terms of defending solidly. The full-backs, Guy Demel and Joey O'Brien, can be a defensive weakness. If we pass and move, manipulate them out of position and exploit the gaps created - as we did at times against Steaua and Man U - they will find it difficult to keep us out.
'They do have a system they work rigidly to, but they have mistakes in them and on a bad day they could suffer.
'Demba Ba may well return because he's fresh and Fernando Torres played the full match and took a bit of a battering on Thursday. Ba's also a former Hammer and I'm sure he'll want to do well against his former club. Remember he scored the winner in our last home league game against West Brom too.
'We need to get our creative players on the ball and to get up and at their deep-lying midfielder Gary O'Neil (pictured below), but cope with the physical presence of Mohamed Diame when he surges forward too - something we didn't do when he came on as sub at the Boleyn Ground.
'Rafa might want some muscle in there to cope with Diame. Mikel is the perfect foil to stop him in his tracks and you can see Branislav Ivanovic coming in to the line-up for aerial strength and power.
'It could be a big day for Frank Lampard against his old club, needing one to reach 200 goals. I imagine he'll be on penalty duty if he's playing.'
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