Coming just 64 hours after the final whistle was blown on our Conference League win over Gent, our clash with Forest – which kicks off at 2 pm on Sunday – is a taste of the unrelenting fixture schedule to come during the final months of 2024.

Happily, the Blues have won seven of our previous nine top-flight matches following a home European midweek fixture – and five of the six domestic dates following Conference League action will take place at the Bridge.

While the Blues convincingly saw off Gent to begin our Conference League quest, Forest had a free week to reflect upon last Saturday’s home loss to Fulham, which was the first league match this season in which they failed to open the scoring.

Seven of the East Midlander's nine points have been earned on the road, including three at Anfield, and their defensive record is the joint second-best in the top flight.

Nuno Espirito Santo's side will not be easy to crack, but Chelsea enter the weekend on an impressive run of nine wins and one defeat from eleven Premier League outings since early May. We have also recorded the most goals (29) over that period.

Importantly, a first home victory over Forest since they were promoted into the Premier League in 2022 would secure our place in the top four over the international break – and ahead of our trip to Anfield to face Liverpool on October 20.

Chelsea team news

The Blues head into our seventh league game of the season on a run of four wins from the past five.

Maresca stated he learned a lot from the 4-2 defeat of Gent – a repeat of last weekend’s scoreline against previously unbeaten Brighton – as plenty of players built confidence and stated their case for more minutes.

However, Wesley Fofana, Romeo Lavia and Cole Palmer, uninvolved on Thursday nights having not been registered in our Conference League squad, could feature this weekend if Maresca names a side similar to the one that defeated Brighton.

Palmer, of course, netted all four goals against the Seagulls – in 19 nonchalant first-half minutes – and is averaging a goal or assist every 73 minutes with the Blues. Yet he is not the only player excelling under our Italian head coach.

With assists in each of his first three Premier League games, Jadon Sancho needs one more this weekend to equal Cesc Fabregas’s 2014 club record of four in four.

In the early weeks of the campaign, the rapid counter-attacks of our front four have resulted in a division-best ten shots, three of which have been goals.

Even on set-pieces, despite delivering the fewest attempts on goal (12), the Blues have scored twice. That's only one behind the best returns in the Premier League thus far: Aston Villa, Leicester City, Everton and Arsenal (3).

Reece James is expected to be the Blues' only absentee, although Maresca did confirm on Thursday evening that Carney Chukwuemeka was absent against Genk due to illness.

Notably, the average age of Chelsea players involved this season (23.8) is almost three years lower than Forest’s (26.7).

Chelsea vs Nottingham Forest - The history

This fixture last season finished disappointingly for the Chelsea faithful, with a 1-0 defeat suffered despite having plenty of time to recover from substitute Anthony Elanga’s pounce early in the second half.

The Blues claimed 75 per cent of the ball that September day and posted an expected goals total of 2.3. Yet only two of our 21 shots required saves and a disappointing afternoon is most notable for substitute Cole Palmer’s debut in Chelsea blue.

That loss came after nine without defeat against Forest across all competitions, a run that included seven victories.

The Londoners’ most recent league win at the Bridge over Forest was back in September 1998, when Gianfranco Zola found the net after just 25 seconds thanks to spade work by Pierluigi Casiraghi.

Gus Poyet doubled our lead ten minutes before half-time with a simple header to secure our first league win of the season, despite Jean-Claude Darcheville’s reply.

Know this…

If you judge Cole Palmer by the Chelsea company he keeps, the 22-year-old is undoubtedly elite.

Last weekend, he became only the fifth Chelsea player to net four or more goals in a top-flight league game on two occasions. The others? Joe Bambrick in the 1930s, Jimmy Greaves in the 1950s and '60s, Bobby Tambling in the 1960s), and more recently Frank Lampard.

With ten goal contributions this season – six goals and four assists – he is level with Erling Haaland across Europe's top five leagues, ahead of strikers Harry Kane and Robert Lewandowski.

Included among Palmer's four-goal haul against the Seagulls was a tenth converted Chelsea penalty. In the process, he became only the second player to reach double figures for successful Premier League spot-kicks without a failure. Yaya Toure leads the way on 11.

And thanks to the Wythenshawe wonder, the Blues and Brighton are the only teams to have scored directly from a free kick this season.

The Blues have eliminated the Reds from the FA Cup four times this century – more than any other club.