MAJESTIC CHELSEA MEETS CITY CHALLENGE

Drogba
Revenge may be the driving force behind Chelsea as it storms the City of Manchester to keep a lunchtime Premiership date with Manchester City.

Everyone expects a cracker, as the Blues will roll out all its attacking options to ensure it extracts the vital points from City in order to maintain its grip at the summit of the table.

Last season, Chelsea probably neglected City and paid dearly for its action. The mistake turned out to be a mighty gift to City, as it buried Chelsea 2-1 early in the season and proceeded to make it a rout with an emphatic 4-2 thrashing of the Blues at the Bridge in the reversed fixture. Chelsea may probably have learnt some lessons from its last season's experience and now, may resist thunder from striking twice at the same spot.

At the moment, the team has yet to drop even a single point. With 15 points from five games, Chelsea is strutting the Premiership table like a colossus. Analysts seem to agree that the club is right on auto-cruise, and therefore, is the favourite to win today's game.

Blues lead strikers – Didier Drogba, Florent Malouda, Salomon Kalou and Nicolas Anelka – are all firing in every vital goal to keep the team in the commanding height. But its last Wednesday's defeat by Premiership returnee, Newcastle, in a Carling Cup encounter, has remained an eye opener that the 'London Millionaires' could as well bite the dust.

City may be propelled by this new awareness to declare a fight-to-finish war against Chelsea. Already, every team has come to realise that picking early points is vital to finishing well on the table. So it is likely that manager Roberto Mancini will task his wards to spill blood just to claim victory in this game. After all, they cut down Liverpool, one of the big four, at the same venue in Week 2 of the competition. This time, it could be the turn of Chelsea to fall.

With two wins and two draws, City is coming fourth on the table with eight points, but it risks sliding further to the 14th position in one free fall if it fails to seize its home advantage and win this game.

Meanwhile, with an array of players like forward, Mario Balotelli, David Silva, Yaya Toure, Carlos Tevez, Jerome Boateng, as well as Emmanuel Adebayor, City is not supposed to struggle in any match.