After 2-0 opening weekend losses to last term’s title-chasers Manchester City and Arsenal, both Chelsea and Wolvers are looking for their first goal and clean sheet of the league season.

Chelsea are at least under way in the UEFA Conference League after a 2-0 win against Servette at Stamford Bridge in the play-off round first leg on Thursday.

Wanderers were the only side to achieve a Premier League double against the Londoners last season, edging this fixture 2-1 on Christmas Eve. However, they have not won their opening Premier League fixture at Molineux since 2011, against Fulham.

Chelsea, meanwhile, will hope to continue an excellent record in first away matches of a Premier League campaign. We have begun six of the past eight away league campaigns with a victory and ended last season’s travels with two straight wins to claim sixth place. The Old Gold side finished 14th.

Team news

The Londoners travel to the Black Country with the first victory, goals and clean sheet of Enzo Maresca’s management under our belts. The Italian will, though, demand more intensity from his players than was the case on Thursday.

The Swiss were able to create chances and Wolves are far more demanding physically. It was lapses of concentration under pressure that cost the Blues points at Wolves last time out.

Several likely starters this weekend were left out of the Conference League play-off XI. However, no one off the bench impressed more than dynamic Noni Madueke, whose emphatic spank handed the Blues some breathing space going into next week’s decider in Geneva.

Injury-free Christopher Nkunku’s expertly-dispatched penalty means the forward has opened his account for the season four months earlier than last term – his 2023/24 breakthrough coming at Molineux on Christmas Eve.

The returning Joao Felix was unavailable in midweek but is available to make his second debut, 18 months after his first. Like several players recently recovered from injury, Pedro Neto’s minutes are managed and the winger may not start at the stadium he once lit up.

At 23 years and 180 days, the Chelsea team that took the field against City last week was the second-youngest of any club on a Premier League opening weekend. In a more advanced role for most of those 90 minutes, skipper Enzo Fernandez recorded the most shots (three) and touches in the opposition box (seven) of any home player.

Cole Palmer felt an issue in his hamstring after the Servette win and Reece James is still suspended.

The history

Wolves have become a bogey side again for the Blues. We have won just one of the past eight meetings between the two sides and are on a run of three consecutive losses home and away.

The most recent was the Premier League’s second-ever Christmas Eve match, played at Molineux. The Old Gold side ran out 2-1 winners, despite Nkunku’s last-gasp strike, completing back-to-back league wins against the Blues for the first time since the mid-Seventies.

The Londoners have failed to scoop all three points in the Black Country since a 5-2 victory under Frank Lampard in September 2019, in which Tammy Abraham accounted for four of the seven scored – uniquely including an own goal alongside his hat-trick.

Know this…

Chelsea have lost only once in eight Premier League away games stretching back to mid-February, winning the last two of 2023/24 at Forest and Brighton. Wolves closed the 2023/24 campaign by losing four of their last five home league games.

The last time the Blues suffered a third loss in a row at Wolverhampton was May 1975, a 7-1 defeat – one fewer than our all-time record loss at the same ground in September 1953.

Our 16 Premier League games on the road without a clean sheet is the Londoners’ longest such run since 24 in 1993/94. At Stamford Bridge on 25 August 1928, 96 years ago, Chelsea officially trialled shirt numbers on players’ backs for the first time in English football.

Chelsea opening away league matches

2023 - West Ham 3-1 Chelsea
2022 - Everton 0-1 Chelsea
2021 - Arsenal 0-2 Chelsea
2020 - Brighton 1-3 Chelsea
2019 - Manchester United 4-0 Chelsea
2018 - Huddersfield 0-3 Chelsea
2017 - Tottenham 1-2 Chelsea
2016 - Watford 1-2 Chelsea
2015 - Manchester City 3-0 Chelsea
2014 - Burnley 1-3 Chelsea