The Premier League football weekend starts here, with Chelsea heading across town to West Ham for our second Saturday lunchtime road trip in the space of a fortnight. The previous 12.30pm kick-off at Liverpool brought a 0-0 stalemate, and Graham Potter’s side arrive on a run of three games unbeaten without conceding.

The sun always rises in the east but the fear of going down seems to have energised the east-enders. The 17th-placed hosts had lost six of their previous seven league matches, but are now unbeaten in two and comfortably beat struggling Everton last time out at the London Stadium.

After this weekend seven league games away and nine at Stamford Bridge will await the world champions. Chelsea can still use that term until around 9pm on Saturday, when the FIFA Club World Cup final between Real Madrid and Al-Hilal reaches its climax.

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Having already beaten Palace home and away and nailed the Hammers 2-1 back in September, the Blues can now secure the second league ‘double’ of the season, and a third success in a row against David Moyes‘ men. A win would lift Chelsea, currently 10 points shy of the top four, up to seventh, however briefly.

Chelsea team news

The lifting of Joao Felix’s suspension plus more players returning from injury should hand Graham Potter the luxury of a selection dilemma in every department this weekend. The crucial Champions League Round of 16 away leg in Dortmund on Wednesday – which not all new signings are eligible for – may also factor into his decisions.

Since the impressive Joao made his short-lived debut in mid-January, four new team-mates have made their own bow to fine effect: Benoit Badiashile, Mykhailo Mudryk, Enzo Fernandez and Noni Madueke. This is a very different team to the one that edged past the Irons in September.

Only two teams have a better defensive record in this season’s top flight than Chelsea’s 21 goals conceded: Arsenal (17) and Newcastle (12). The Blues have, though, let in twice as many on the road (14) as at Stamford Bridge (seven).

The squad, though, needs to rediscover its scoring touch, with eight blanks in the past 12 and five goals in all competitions since the restart. There has been plenty of evidence in the dynamic displays of Joao Felix, David Fofana, Mudryk and key returnees that those figures are set to improve soon.

After Reece James, Ben Chilwell and Raheem Sterling all returned to action against Fulham, it is a little too early for Wesley Fofana to be available for the first time since a knee injury sustained in an AC Milan win on 5 October. Sterling has recorded four goals and five assists in five visits to the London Stadium, the most by any visitor, although he is rated a doubt for this game due to a training knock.

Mateo Kovacic and Denis Zakaria, in fine form before his injury, have trained this week but this game is too soon for one to partner-up with Qatar World Cup-winner Fernandez, who instantly settled into his playmaker role last Friday against Fulham. Christian Pulisic, N’Golo Kante and Edou Mendy seem likely to remain sidelined.

Scouting the opposition – West Ham

Sixty-eight per cent of all West Ham’s league points have been earned at the London Stadium this season, but they have defeated one side above the bottom six there. David Moyes’ side have gone behind to visiting sides in seven of their 10 top-flight outings at home, finding an equaliser on two occasions.

The Irons remain one point clear of the relegation places, though beating Everton (their first key win for a while) provided momentum that brought a draw at St James’ Park last weekend. The form of key players and return of others will give them confidence they can rise out of the mire.

Last season’s tormentor, winger Jarrod Bowen, has returned to richer form with three in three across all competitions, and the aggressive and efficient left-footer Nayef Aguerd, Hakim Ziyech’s Morocco team-mate, has helped seal a previously leaky rearguard.

There have also been interesting changes in the dynamic between central midfield duo of Declan Rice and Tomas Soucek. Over the past year the former Cobham youngster was deployed in a box-to-box role, restricting his Czech partner – who found the net 10 times in 2020/21, remember – to a holding role. The arrival of intelligent playmaker Lucas Paqueta has meant Soucek sometimes missing out and Rice reverting to the defensive tasks at which he excels.

As is so often the case, though, fate compounded the departures of centre-back Craig Dawson and goalie Darren Randolph by delivering injuries to Thilo Kehrer and Lukasz Fabianski’s understudy Alphonse Areola. While the 26-year-old German’s place on the right of a back three was ably filled by Ben Johnson in Saturday’s 1-1 point-share at Newcastle, two development squad goalkeepers were on the bench.

Michail Antonio, meanwhile, has recently played every game as lone ranger as 6ft 5in striker Gianluca Scamacca was injured and January signing, poacher Danny Ings, needed injections in a painful knee; both could be in contention to start this weekend. However, Kurt Zouma will not be fit for this reunion with his Blues team-mates, and winger Maxwell Cornet is still in recuperation.

West still best

Chelsea have the highest win rate in Premier League London derbies (52.6 per cent), recording 149 in total. The west Londoners’ average take of 1.5 points per derby fixture this season also compares favourably to the 1.43 earned in the league season as a whole.

West Ham, in contrast, are averaging fewer points per game (0.67) in all-London affairs than overall (0.90), and their only scalp in the capital so far was Fulham back in October.

Premier League London derbies 2022/23

Can Andrey emulate a previous Blue?

With two rounds of fixtures remaining, January signing Andrey Santos could win his first honour as a Chelsea player in the early hours of Monday morning. The outstanding 18-year-old midfielder is captaining Brazil Under-20s at the South American Under-20 Championship and is currently the tournament’s second-highest goalscorer with five.

The junior Selecao are leading the way in a competition they last won in 2011, when their squad included Neymar, Casemiro and Oscar, who joined the Blues’ midfield a year later and won the Europa League and Premier League twice.

Taking the knee

All Premier League teams will take the knee this weekend and next in support of the No Room For Racism campaign, which over the past two years has helped deliver progress in embedding equality and increasing diversity on and off the pitch.

The groundbreaking strategy includes multiple initiatives from stand to boardroom, and since its inception representation from ethnically diverse backgrounds in the Premier League’s own workforce has risen from 12 to 16 per cent, with 30 per cent the target by 2031.

Sleep at the Bridge for a worthy cause

Saturday 25 March will see the return of the Big Stamford Bridge Sleep-Out, the annual event in which Blues supporters stay the night in the East Stand, raising funds for our charitable neighbours Oswald Stoll Foundation and promoting awareness of London’s homelessness problem.

Spaces are strictly limited so register today via the CST website to make sure you don’t miss out.

• By club historian Rick Glanvill and club statistician Paul Dutton