Didier Drogba Inclusion Very Important for Chelsea's Chances Against Arsenal

The game of the weekend is most certainly Arsenal v Chelsea and Arsenal can pretty much guarantee themselves Champions League football next season with a win here whilst Chelsea may not need to finish in the top four of the Premiership to qualify for next season’s Champions League after their win over Barcelona in the week but they still want to finish as high as possible in the league.

Chelsea performed heroics in the week to beat Barcelona and that win for Chelsea means that Barcelona have been highlighted by the ValueChecker Drifters. Barcelona are out to best odds of 2.2 to win the Champions League after that defeat and there was an average change of odds of 20.9% but that effort from Chelsea might have taken its toll after a busy period for Chelsea with the Premiership and FA Cup also being on their agenda recently.

According to the Arsenal ValueChecker wikis this game should be a good candidate for over 2.5 goals. Arsenal have been a side with a great attack but slightly leaky defence for several years now and that means Arsenal are one of the best teams for betting on over 2.5 goals. In the 10/11 Premiership season 23 of Arsenal’s 38 games had over 2.5 goals in and it was a similar story the season before, 25 of Arsenal’s league matches had over 2.5 goals in 09/10.    

Didier Drogba has once again proved his importance to the team, he has scored the first goal of the game twice in the last week and if he starts he could once again be a good bet for the first goalscorer, if he doesn’t play then the amount of goals Chelsea are likely to score should drop as Drogba also chips in with plenty of assists too as shown by the Chelsea ValueChecker wikis. Didier Drogba proved an important player for Chelsea in the 10/11 Premiership season, not only providing his team with 12 goals but also 15 assists. This is no one off, in the 09/10 season Drogba played a hand in 42 goals, scoring 29 and setting up 13. If Drogba doesn't play, don't expect as many goals from Chelsea.

If looking for an in running bet in the second half of this match then it may be best to assume Chelsea are well capable of scoring late goals. In the 10/11 Premiership season Chelsea scored 20 goals between the 76th minute and the final whistle whilst the season before they had an even better record scoring 26 goals between the 76th minute and the final whistle. In both seasons no team scored more goals in that time window

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