Thiago Silva to miss Chelseas clash with Manchester United

Chelsea remain without Thiago Silva for Sunday’s Premier League clash with Manchester United.

The Brazil defender has not featured for the Blues since the 1-0 win at Tottenham on February 4 due to a thigh injury.

Boss Thomas Tuchel confirmed Silva should return to full training next week and has no other injury concerns ahead of the Stamford Bridge meeting.

Donny Van De Beek is back in contention for Manchester United but Edinson Cavani and Scott McTominay look set to be absent again.

Cavani and Van De Beek have missed the past three matches with muscle complaints, while McTominay has been absent since coming off 60 minutes into last week’s Europa League last-32 first-leg win against Real Sociedad.

Van de Beek trained on Friday but McTominay joins Paul Pogba on the sidelines, while Ole Gunnar Solskjaer says he is not optimistic about Cavani’s chances of making the game. Daniel James will be assessed after limping off in Thursday’s second leg and Solskjaer has confirmed Juan Mata will be out for a couple of weeks, joining Phil Jones (knee) and Hannibal Mejbri (shoulder) on the sidelines.

Chelsea provisional squad: Mendy, Azpilicueta, Christensen, Rudiger, Hudson-Odoi, Jorginho, Kovacic, Alonso, Mount, Werner, Giroud, Arrizabalaga, James, Zouma, Chilwell, Kante, Havertz, Ziyech, Pulisic, Abraham, Caballero, Emerson, Gilmour.

Manchester United provisional squad: De Gea, Henderson, Grant, Wan-Bissaka, Williams, Bailly, Lindelof, Maguire, Tuanzebe, Shaw, Telles, Matic, Van De Beek, Fred, Fernandes, Diallo, James, Shoretire, Greenwood, Martial, Rashford.

 

Best Bet

 

Chelsea v Manchester United Prediction
Chelsea were fantastic against Atletico Madrid in midweek. The Blues are clearly warming to life with Thomas Tuchel and the crafty German is now unbeaten in eight matches since coming on board. Someone ‘did the math’ on that Chelsea bench the other night and said it was worth £352m. If accurate that underlines the crazy depth of their squad and I quite fancy them to claim a clutch three points against the Red Devils here. They will have to keep Portuguese rascal Bruno Fernandes quiet of course but if they do they probably win.

Betting: Chelsea to win at 6/5 (Paddy Power)

Super Sunday watchalong and live quiz on F365 this weekend

We miss the transfer window blogs so bloody much on F365 that this Sunday we’re going to host a live watchalong on these very pages to chat rubbish and do some quizzing.

There have been some particularly rotten Sunday schedules in the Premier League this season, but this week we have something genuinely resembling a Super Sunday, with four out of the top six teams in action across a nine-hour marathon.

And because we still can’t go to the pub, we’re going to bring the pub to you with some inane chat, half-baked theories, ill-advised bets and a quiz. If you can’t watch the game and want a minute-by-minute text commentary, we cannot stress enough that this is not going to be the place for you.

But if you want to play commentary cliche bingo, test your knowledge of the Premier League season so far and potentially follow Dave Tickner getting angry live when Spurs play Burnley, then this is absolutely the place for you.

We’ll kick off the blog just before that game with some reaction to the midday kick-offs – Crystal Palace v Fulham and Leicester v Arsenal – then Tickers will talk us through the tactics of Jose Mourinho and Sean Dyche and possibly, quite possibly, endure a meltdown in front of your very eyes. And even if just for that reason alone, we’re very much encouraging your questions and debate via Twitter.

We’ll give Tickers a chance to recompose himself at full-time and hand over to Mark Smith, who’s going to be hosting a live quiz on YouTube and Twitter about the Premier League season so far. We’ve partnered with interactive quiz company KwizzBit so you can play along on your phones and see how you’re performing against everyone else. It’s first come, first served for up to 500 people so make sure you’re logged on at around 4pm.

Then after we’ve crowned the first F365 Quiz champion we’ll hand back to Tickers for more tactical analysis and chit-chat during Chelsea v Manchester United and Sheffield United v Liverpool. Tweet us your thoughts, questions and other nonsense as it’s all going on and we’ll involve as many of you as we can on the blog. We’ll need your help compiling our commentary cliche bingo card for a start…