Chelsea hosts Valencia

Chelsea hosts Valencia at the Stamford Bridge in a match from Group H of the Champions League. This should be a pretty good game to watch. Let’s examine it in our Champions League predictions.

Last season Chelsea finished outside Top 4 of the Premier League, but they still qualified for the Champions League after winning Europa League. This is their return to Europe’s best competition. This is also going to be a Champions League debut as a manager for Chelsea’s new coach Frank Lampard. He won the tournament as a player in 2012.

For Frank Lampard the start of the season was not easy. He lost the game against Liverpool for the European Super Cup, while in the Premier League the Blues didn’t win neither one of their first two matches.

Lately Chelsea started to show more. In their last game the Londoners had a very difficult visit to Wolverhampton Wanderers at the Molineux which they won in a very impressive way – 5-2. The young striker Tammy Abraham shined above everybody else, scoring a hattrick in Rui Patricio’s net. Fikayo Tomori and Mason Mount also scored for Chelsea.

Meanwhile Valencia are entering this game after a very difficult last week for the club. First the head coach Marcelino left the club, because of his bad brelationship with the club’s board. He was replaced by the former Spain U-21 manager Albert Celades.

Celades’ debut in Valencia was far from successful, because Los Che suffered a very bad 2-5 during the visit to Barcelona in La Liga. Kevin Gameiro and Maxi Gomez scored for Valencia, but in general Barca dominated this game, even without Lionel Messi.

In our Champions League predictions we believe that Chelsea are in a better place right now, feeling inspired by their great win over Wolves in the Premier League. In the same time Valencia are in a difficult situation after the departure of Marcelino. We think that Chelsea are going to win this one.