Hazard wants to win CL with Chelsea

Tuesday’s encounter at Stamford Bridge is the second in a sequence of seven matches in 21 days for Conte’s Premier League champions.

“For the Premier League, you always have the opportunity to win when you play for a club like Chelsea“.

N’Golo Kante is underlining his status as the best player in the Premier League and Chelsea boss Antonio Conte feels the best is yet to come from the France midfielder.

Morata was a Champions League victor last season and has made a fine start to his career in London but Chelsea have reminded fans they face life bans and police action if they sing the song first heard in a 2-1 win at Leicester.

The Blues face an unknown quantity of sorts, in the form of Azerbaijan club FK Qarabag, a side that surprisingly made it through the UEFA Champions League qualification phases, where they had a relatively easy run in, with FC Kobenhavn the toughest team in their path.

Antonio Conte is not prepared to take “stupid risks” with Eden Hazard’s recent ankle injury, meaning the Belgium star is set for the bench once again for Chelsea’s Champions League opener with Qarabag on Tuesday. “In England it’s not easy to do this.” he added.

Danny Drinkwater is out with a calf injury.

Pressed to pick between success at home or overseas, the 23-year-old midfielder told the Evening Standard: “I would choose the Champions League because it is an exceptionally hard competition”.

Chelsea did not compete in Europe last season for the first time in 20 years after a lowly 10th-place league finish in 2015-16. “They played defensive football and counter-attack football”.

“Now we have to play Champions League“.

“There is the necessity to rotate and play game-by-game”.

Chelsea have truly exited their phase of crisis, with a strong win over Leicester City.

Qarabag manager Gurban Gurbanov, celebrating a decade in charge of the club this season, has nearly a fully-fit squad to make history on the Stamford Bridge turf tonight, with left-back Ansi Agolli, skipper of the Albanian national team, the only notable absence. Eden last season was awesome, top player and we’re looking forward to having him back in our team’. We realise we have a lot of games coming up this month and we know how important the squad is going to be, but we want to keep building momentum and that continues tomorrow with a big game for us’.