Chelsea captain still struggling for fitness

John Terry’s return to the Chelsea line-up has been put on hold, with the Chelsea captain struggling for match fitness.

Terry made his return to action as a late substitute in Chelsea’s 4-0 win over Stoke on Saturday, and had been expected to start tonight’s Premier League match against Southampton.

Chelsea interim boss Rafa Benitez has revealed that Terry is still not fully recovered.

Rafa said: “John is fine. He was training yesterday and today, doing normal sessions.

“But still the fitness is not the same as we would like. For match fitness you have to play games. Every session will help but he needs more time.”

Benitez went on to add his thoughts on why Chelsea’s home form has dipped of late, adding: “At home, the other teams play deep and you have less space. We’re still creating chances, but we have to be more clinical.

“We need to take our chances and, if we do, it’ll be totally different. Teams will have to be more open and we’ll have more space.

“But it’s down to football reasons. When you play away and you have space, the players we have can make a big difference.

“Against 11 players behind the ball, you have to find the space, so you have to practise and prepare, but I do not believe it is harder for us at home. We have confidence we can do well. We did against Aston Villa and Nordsjaelland.

“What we have to do is improve and learn how to play these games against 11 behind the ball.

“We have to keep winning games, doing well and scoring goals. We are scoring a lot of goals and conceding not too many. That’s the balance we were looking for. Let’s see where we are in a few weeks.”

The Spanish manager is a good rival for Arsene Wenger when it comes to excuses, but anybody would have to admit that we had the better of the game against Swansea as well as QPR of late. We missed a host of goalscoring opportunities, which eventually cost us the game.

As for Terry, we need our captain back. I cant help but think we would not have lost those 2 crunch games, if Chelsea had his experience on the pitch. We will need him back fully for the second leg of the cup.