We await to see whether he will make changes to the side that played out a scoreless draw at Manchester United on Saturday although one is guaranteed. Thiago Silva has remained in England this week and Lampard has explained that choice.‘With Thiago I decided and we decided, because I speak with Thiago a lot, with the game that we played at the weekend, the journey here [to Russia] and the travel back, we arrive very late back into London on Thursday morning and then we play three games over the next week, we made a choice to protect Thiago.‘We have other centre-backs in the team so it is not hopefully to make us weaker. Someone else gets an opportunity and hopefully takes it.’

The Blues go into tonight’s fixture having drawn 0-0 in our opening group- stage match at Stamford Bridge, which immediately preceded the goalless encounter at Old Trafford.‘We were happy with some of the defensive side of our game in the last two games,’ notes Lampard.

‘Sevilla was a tough match for our first game in the Champions League, but every game is different. We always try to be defensively strong, so those two games have been positives but we want good attacking football as well.

‘So we come to Krasnodar to win and we come here to score goals. It is a fantastic stadium, a good team, we know about them so we will respect them and we want to win.‘We always try to play with the ball. Last season when we qualified for the Champions League we dominated possession in most games in the Premier League. Every game is different but dominating possession is part of how we want to play, but we respect the opposition.‘We know they [Krasnodar] want to play and have possession, they have a lot of possession in their league games, not so much against Rennes in their first match, so we will try to take possession, not just for the sake of having possession but to attack and try to score some goals.’