The league leaders can take a break from their march to the Premier League title with this match against Peterborough United who are currently in eighth place in League One.
As you would expect the match odds on this market are heavily weighted in Chelsea’s favour amongst our green listed bookmakers. You can’t get anything better than 1.2 for a Chelsea win right now and Peterborough have odds as long as 17 trying to tempt punters over to that side of the market. That’s not a trap I’m looking to fall into and I suggest you don’t either.
Chelsea have been helped this season by having no European football distracting them from chasing down that league title. In line with that I don’t think they’ll be viewing the FA Cup as a high priority but this should not be an overly difficult match for them and they will be looking to get through to the fourth round with the minimum of fuss.
They could rotate their side and bring in some of their very highly rated youngsters. Players like Dominic Solanke will be hoping for a place on the bench at least for this one and others further down the development track like Ruben Loftus-Cheek and Nathaniel Chalobah will be hoping to actually start the match. Kurt Zouma could be in line for his first start since his nasty injury last season and maybe Michy Batshuayi will get a chance with Diego Costa taking a well-earned break.
Peterborough will likely play their first choice XI which could mean Luke McGee remaining in goal if his parent club (Tottenham) are happy with him being cup tied. Newly acquired striker Junior Morias won’t be able to play though as he is already cup tied after appearing for St Albans in the FA Cup first round.
Being realistic, no-one expects Grant McCann’s side to win this one but the experience will do them good and if they put in a strong performance then that can only help them as they start the second half of their league campaign.
As always in matches like this where there is such a solid favourite, trying to find a value bet of any kind is hard. I’m a little tempted by a couple of the lines in the Asian Handicap markets and Chelsea -2 looks like a reasonable prospect with BetVictor offering 1.83. I’m going to push it just a little bit further though and go for Chelsea -2.5. Pinnacle are offering 2.3 on that and I think they can cover that handicap even with a rotated side.
This isn’t an easy match to give a tip for and I don’t expect it to be a particularly pleasant match to watch either as Peterborough could be in for a bit of a pasting. Regardless it gives us a chance to make some money and I’ll be following the action carefully.
Calculators
