Sunderland vs Chelsea Preview, Team News, Line-Ups, Betting Tips & Predicted Score

Deposed Premier League champions Chelsea take on relegation-threatened Sunderland at the Stadium of Light on Saturday afternoon.

The Blues have endured a season to forget and the summer probably can’t come quick enough for the majority of the squad with many players already having one eye on Euro 2016.

In fairness, that wasn’t the case at Stamford Bridge on Monday night as the Chelsea players dug deep to come from two goals down to draw 2-2 against Tottenham, handing the title to Leicester City at their London rivals expense.

I don’t think we’ll see that kind of commitment from Chelsea again tomorrow but the hosts will be fighting for every ball as they battle to secure their top flight status for another season.

The Black Cats currently find themselves in the bottom three but they are just one point adrift of Newcastle with a game in hand so Sam Allardyce’s men can take a huge step towards survival with a win tomorrow.

Team news

Thibaut Courtois is set to return in goal after completing his two match suspension so Asmir Begovic will drop to the bench.

John Terry made a successful return from injury on Monday night so he should continue at the back but Kurt Zouma and Loic Remy remain out injured.

Sunderland have just one injury concern to worry about with Billy Jones ruled out with a hip problem and Allardyce may be tempted to stick with the same side that has started in the last five games.

Likely Line-Ups

Predicted Score

Sunderland 1-1 Chelsea: Sunderland will be battling for everything and with Chelsea struggling for motivation, you’d be forgiven for thinking this should be a home win. However, Chelsea still have plenty of quality throughout their team and even at 90% they will be a match for most sides. Plus, the West Londoners have an excellent record against Sunderland having won 19 and lost just two of their last 22 league games, so I can see them taking home a point tomorrow.

Betting Tips

Betting on Premier League football has been extremely difficult this season due to the amount of shocks that take place every week. Many professional gamblers have given up risking their money on English football and moved to more predictable leagues like the Norwegian Tippelgean. Some even think you’d be better off just trying your luck at a casino or heading to a site like himmelspill.com to play online slots – or spilleautomater nettspill as they say in Norway.

However, if you’d still like to have a punt on this game, then Chelsea are the narrow 7/5 favourites with the bookmakers but I think it will end in a draw and my prediction of 1-1 is available at odds of 11/2 while I also like the look of Diego Costa to open the scoring at 9/2. If you combined those two bets in a score-cast then we get very tempting odds of 28/1.

What do you think? What line-up would you like to see start?