Chelsea captain John Terry expects his team to recover from their New Year’s Day mauling at Tottenham when Watford visit Stamford Bridge in the FA Cup third round today.
The 5-3 loss at White Hart Lane was as painful as it was unexpected and the visit of a side battling to get out of the Championship should provide an opportunity for Jose Mourinho’s shell-shocked players to recover their confidence.
It would be a major surprise if the Premier League leaders stumbled against a team led by former Chelsea midfielder Slavisa Jokanovic, the fourth manager to take charge of the Hornets this season.
Photo: EPA
Chelsea have not needed to rely too much on luck in the FA Cup in recent seasons, but if Mourinho’s side are looking for omens, the pairing with Watford should provide a lift.
The club have paraded the trophy four times in the last eight years, the first of those victories — in 2007 — marked the first final played at the new Wembley and Mourinho’s one and only success in the competition.
Following that win, the west London club virtually took up residency at Wembley, triumphing in 2009, 2010 and 2012, twice facing Watford on the road to success during the first two of those campaigns.
More memorably for some Blues supporters, Dave Sexton’s side crushed Watford 5-1 in the semi-final in 1970 on the way to winning the trophy in a famously brutal final and subsequent replay against Leeds.
However, eyes are likely to be fixed firmly forwar after the Spurs loss that allowed Manchester City to move level on points at the top of the Premier League table and quietened claims Mourinho’s team could complete a clean sweep of honors this season.
Terry is confident of a morale-boosting win today, saying: “We’re very disappointed to start the new year with a defeat, but we’ll move on from this. It’s hard to see them [City] claw us back. We were eight points in front and now we’re level on points. It’s disappointing to have lost that lead, but we said in the dressing room we’ll come together, put a run together and hopefully get a lead again.”
The Spurs defeat suggested some of Mourinho’s players are starting to feel the strain of the busy festive period and the manager is likely to be tempted to make changes for the visit of Watford.
Goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois has a finger injury so he could be replaced by Petr Cech and Mourinho might use the opportunity to rest Diego Costa and Eden Hazard.
Watford have largely maintained steady progress this season despite the upheavals in the dugout and currently lie fifth in the Championship.
Promotion to the Premier League is the priority, but an impressive display at Stamford Bridge would boost confidence and carry added significance for Jokanovic who spent two years as a player at Chelsea over a decade ago.
Watford midfielder Daniel Tozser said: “Chelsea at the moment are in the top five teams in Europe, but it will be a pleasure for the guys to play against a team like this. We have nothing to be afraid of, nothing to lose. This is a game we have to enjoy, to show and to see where we are at the moment.”
“This is a game where we can show to our supporters that we have ambition. We want to play against these teams. The biggest mistake we can make is not to lose the game, or make a mistake — it’s a part of football, especially against a team like this. If we really want to show what we can do, we must not be afraid,” he added.
In FA Cup matches on Friday, Cardiff secured a comfortable 3-1 victory over visitors Colchester, while Milton Keynes Dons hosted Chesterfield, with the away team hanging on to win 1-0.
Additional reporting by staff writer
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier