Champions League preview / Vfb Stuttgart v Chelsea Stuttgart, 7.45 On TV: Sky Sports Xtra: Chelsea travelled to Stuttgart yesterday with their last chance of silverware resting on a competition Claudio Ranieri describes as "bingo".
Now that he has apparently abandoned hope of finishing top of the shop in the league, failure to overcome VfB Stuttgart in the last 16 of the Champions League could mean the Chelsea manager being told his number is up.
Two defeats to Arsenal in the space of six days put paid to Chelsea's ambitions in the FA Cup and left them an apparently irrecoverable nine points behind the Premiership leaders.
The good news for the Londoners is that Damien Duff has recovered sufficiently from an Achilles injury to travel to Germany and may be on the bench for tonight's first leg at the Gottlieb-Daimler Stadium.
Chelsea's bleak mid winter has coincided with the Irishman's absence, first with a dislocated shoulder sustained against Fulham on December 20th and then with the tendon strain blamed indirectly on his shoulder problem, and Chelsea certainly have missed his penetrating runs.
Hernan Crespo also returns after suffering from a fever and if deemed match fit will probably lead the line in place of Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, having so far started every Champions League match for which he was available. But his fellow striker Adrian Mutu stayed at home having taken a knock on the thigh in Saturday's home defeat by Arsenal.
Ranieri has recently criticised his players for forgetting about teamwork in their desire to overturn a deficit, as in the second half of the cup defeat at Highbury, where their individual efforts contrasted with the Gunners' collective solidity.
The Stuttgart coach, Felix Magath, believes that this could also be the Blues' undoing tonight.
"We are a tightly bound group, while Chelsea's line-up is constantly changing, which does not build unity," said the former Germany midfielder. "It's a match of team unity against individual strengths."
Stuttgart won all three of their home ties in the group stage, including a 2-1 victory over Manchester United.
But those wins came during a golden autumn for Magath's side in which they won their first 15 Bundesliga fixtures and went 735 minutes without conceding a league goal.
Their form either side of their winter break has been much less impressive.
Magath's young team have won only one of their past eight games and suffered a 1-0 defeat at lowly Kaiserslautern on Saturday, falling 10 points behind the league leaders Werder Bremen.
But Magath was unusually upbeat after the defeat. Stuttgart conceded a goal in the fourth minute and then dominated the match, but failed to score against a Kaiserslautern goalkeeper, Tim Wiese, in superb form.
"The desire I saw in Kaiserslautern makes me absolutely confident before the match against Chelsea," Magath said. "We are on the right way again. Chelsea is coming at the right time."
His opposite number was at pains not to underestimate the home side.
"Stuttgart are a compact, solid team and the best in the Bundesliga in my opinion," said Ranieri. "It will be a game similar in style to the Premiership but we know how they play and that is important.
"We shall try to play our football and try to win. No match is easy, especially in this competition, but we are ready. It is important not to concede and to try and score one goal at the minimum."
The tie is a rerun of the 1998 Cup Winners' Cup final, which Chelsea, in the only previous meeting between the two sides, won thanks to a Gianfranco Zola goal.
The last time Chelsea played in Germany was only two months ago when they defeated Besiktas 2-0 in Gelsenkirchen in a match moved from Turkey in the wake of the terrorist bombings in Istanbul. The Chelsea midfielder Frank Lampard admitted yesterday: "I am not a specialist on German football and I honestly do not know any of the Stuttgart players." Magath responded: "They have said they don't know any of our players, but they will get to know us. We will win 2-0."
PROBABLE LINE-UPS
VfB STUTTGART (4-4-2): Hildebrand; Hinkel, Zivkovic, Bordon, Lahm; Meira, Soldo, Meissner, Gleb; Kuranyi, Szabics.
CHELSEA (4-4-2): Sullivan; Melchiot, Gallas, Terry, Bridge; Gronkjaer, Makelele, Lampard, Geremi; Crespo, Gudjohnsen.
Referee: K Vassaras (Greece).
