(Video): ESPN pundits point to one area where Chelsea have advantage over Newcastle today | OneFootball

Chelsea’s win over Liverpool last week gave the Blues a major injection of confidence, and despite some tricky conditions for today’s game against Newcastle, there is a lot of belief that the Blues can do it.

On ESPN they weighed up the game, and saw one area where Chelsea could possible take advantage of an important absence for the home team today to try and leverage win that could be worth tens of millions of pounds.

Newcastle’s weakened midfield could hand Chelsea advantage

“I look at that Newcastle team – it’s strong, and there are players who can do Chelsea damage. But missing Joelinton, which we think is going to be the case this weekend. I would normally look at Newcastle and think – where do they have the edge. Usually it’s in the middle of the park, with that extra physicality. But take Joelinton out and they’re not so dominant,” said pundit Harry Symeou.

You can see their discussion in the clip embedded here:

Return of Lavia may swing midfield balance to Chelsea

Kweku Afari agreed, and pointed to the Chelsea side of things:

“Lavia returning for Chelsea is absolutely huge, if he had stayed fit all season we might be looking at a different season for Chelsea… in midfield I think I see an advantage for Chelsea… just that trio of Lavia, Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez… when they’re on the pitch together good things happen.”

We don’t want to get overexcited by some good recent results, but it does seem like the return of Lavia has brought back some crucial balance to our team, and we’ve never been so hopeful that we may actually get the job done as we are now. Maybe we’ll feel a little different in a few hours when the teams walk out and we hear St James’ Park rocking, but we hope not…

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