It has been a tough European campaign for Chelsea's Under-19s team as despite some good performances, results have not been kind with the Blues still in search of a first win in this year’s competition.

Silko Thomas who has featured in all but one fixture this year gave his thoughts on the how the squad are gearing up for this important showdown.

Silko Thomas’ words

‘I think we can all improve, obviously it has been tough for all of us to see results not go our way despite some good performance, but I believe we cannot think about that now.’

‘We have to focus on what we are good at, and I believe the results will fall our way.’

Thomas has a good relationship with the coaching staff, and he said that the team believe in the coaching methods and are looking to do their best to execute the tactics.

‘The gaffer has a lot of faith in us to get positive results and we believe we can win. We do not focus on the opponents but rather we focus on doing what we do best and that is what will help us to win.’

The campaign so far

Our first group game was against GNK Zagreb, and we suffered a 4-2 defeat despite Leo Castledine grabbing a brace.

In a game where we dominated possession, we failed to convert and we were caught out by the home side’s directness.

Two home games followed, and they were both 1-1 draws against Red Bull Salzburg and AC Milan respectively. Both matches saw us have the better opportunities to secure victory, but we had to settle for a point in both.

In our last UYL fixture we took on AC Milan away from home this time and two goals in three minutes from the home side meant we lost 3-1 late on.

Charlie Webster converted from the penalty spot in the 84th minute of the game to tie the scores after Gabriele Alesi’s opener.

With our young Blues probing for an equaliser, we were caught on the counter twice and the home side punished us both times.

Group permutations

Chelsea must win this afternoon to have any chance of getting to the knockout stage of the competition.

A draw or loss will see us knocked out and the last time we exited this competition at this stage was in the 2019/20 season when we accumulated six points, winning once, drawing on three occasions and losing twice.