Chelsea VS Qarabag FK
Tuesday (12/09/2017)
19:45 (WAT)
Chelsea play their first Champions League match under manager Antonio Conte when hosting a club who have never competed at this stage of Europe’s elite club competition before.Tuesday (12/09/2017)
19:45 (WAT)
After exiting in the third qualifying round three times previously, Qarabag have finally become the first representatives of Azerbaijan in the Champions League group phase and certainly face a very difficult start to their campaign.
It is not, however, a completely new experience for Qarabag. They have contested the equivalent stage of the Europa League in the three previous seasons but did not manage to progress any further, winning a total of four of their 18 matches.
As the stats below outline, Qarabag have been to London before to face Tottenham, so again this trip will have a degree of familiarity for them.
Chelsea, of course, missed out on Europe altogether last term because of their disastrous Premier League title defence in 2015-16, and Conte’s two previous Champions League campaigns with Juventus resulted in a quarter-final appearance (lost to Bayern Munich) and a group-stage exit when the Italian champions subsequently reached the Europa League semis (lost to Benfica).
Considering Conte conquered the Premier League in his first season, this competition will obviously be a high priority for he and the club, but the Blues are something of an unknown quantity having changed plenty of their players since their latest participation.
Qarabag deserve credit for having knocked out Copenhagen in the play-offs on away goals and they did win on the road in the two previous rounds, albeit against very limited opposition from Georgia and Moldova.
Unsurprisingly, Chelsea are red-hot favourites to win comfortably and we do not see any other outcome being remotely likely, with this surely being a matter of how many goals the English champions can rack up.
Chelsea vs Qarabag stats
This is Chelsea’s first competitive match against a team from Azerbaijan
Qarabag met Tottenham Hotspur in the 2015-16 Europa League group stage, losing 1-0 at home and 3-1 at White Hart Lane
The only time Chelsea have failed to advance from their Champions League group was in 2012-13 as defending champions – they went on to win the Europa League that season
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