Chelsea confident they can cope without African stars

Frank Lampard has joined his manager and some team mates in claiming that Chelsea will cope just fine without the four African players away on International duty in the African Nations Cup.

Chelsea will lose Didier Drogba, Michael Essien, Salomon Kalou and John Obi Mikel and face up to six games without them, however Lampard is fairly confident Chelsea will cope.

“Hopefully it won’t affect us too much,”

“We lose four big players. We will miss them, obviously, but we have a big squad. We have to hope we don’t get injuries, like other clubs in the Premier League, and if we don’t we have a lot of options up front and in midfield, intelligent players that can play in different areas. We play five or six games in this period and think we’ll be all right.”

Lampard is right in that Chelsea will have to avoid injuries but he is also correct in stating that Chelsea do have players that can play in different positions also.

It must also be noted that while Man Utd wont lose any players other Premiership teams will including Arsenal who will lose two defenders in Toure and Eboue.

Chelsea along with Portsmouth will lose the most players but with Chelsea’s depth they can at least put out quality replacements.