Antonio Rudiger is being backed to start for Chelsea tonight when they take on Roma, with Blues legend Pat Nevin revealing how impressed he’s been with the centre-back.
Since coming on as a substitute against Roma earlier this month, Rudiger has become a regular starter in the Chelsea team. He’s played against Watford and Bournemouth in the Premier League and scored against Everton in last week’s EFL Cup win.
The 24-year-old, who joined from Roma over the summer, has many attributes that make him ideal to play tonight’s Champions League game – as well as a surprising talent.
‘Maybe the most important performance [against Everton] in the widest sense was from Antonio Rudiger. He was his usual rugged self in the defensive tackling department, in fact his marking was generally superb in the back third of the field and of course he scored that superb header to open the scoring against Everton,’ Nevin told Chelseafc.com, before going on to explain why the German has given Antonio Conte a selection dilemma for tonight’s game.
‘The reason why his performance is important is because Conte has a huge call to make at the back for the Roma game tonight. Does Rudiger start this one? He did after all come on against Roma near the end of the first game and he did a pretty good job on Edin Dzeko, who was by then hunting for his hat-trick.
‘By Saturday evening he was first choice in the league team down on the South Coast and once again showed his defensive prowess, as well as his ridiculous pace when put under any pressure. He also had a few pretty spectacular searching balls from left centre-back to Zappacosta on the opposite right wing which, I will be honest, I wasn’t aware he had in his locker.’
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If Rudiger is selected to help deal with the threat posed by Dzeko, who scored twice at Stamford Bridge a fortnight ago, Conte may need to shuffle his back line.
‘The only problem is that on Saturday, the defence had Cesar Azpilicueta on the right, David Luiz central and Rudiger on the left,’ explained Nevin. ‘Dzeko almost always peels away to the area Cesar would be positioned, on the right-hand side of our defence. If Antonio Conte goes with the same back-three does he consider switching Azpi and Rudiger to allow the latter to cope directly with the Dzeko threat?’
Tonight’s game at the Olympic Stadium kicks off at 7.45pm with Chelsea knowing any sort of result virtually guarantees their progress to the knockout phase of the competition.
MORE : Michael Owen’s Champions League predictions, including Man Utd, Chelsea and Spurs v Real Madrid
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