Roy Hodgson conducted his pre-Chelsea press conference immediately following his post-match commitments after the 1-1 draw against Brighton & Hove Albion last week.
“[Sam] Johnstone I’m sure won’t be [available]. [Odsonne] Edouard would have to surprise me – it doesn’t look like that’s the situation at the moment.
“But to be fair, in those areas at the moment, we’re doing well enough. The boys have come in and played in place of them and are doing well enough.
“I don’t think there would be any reason for me to bemoan the fact they [Johnstone and Edouard] are not there, because if they were there, that might mean that [Dean] Henderson and [Jean-Philippe] Mateta didn’t play. At the moment, those two fully deserve to play.
“Having said that, I’d be very delighted to get them back – the sooner the better. But I don’t see that.
“[Cheick] Doucouré, of course, absolutely not. There’s no chance of getting [Rob] Holding back or [Jesurun] Rak-Sakyi back, but our squad is looking a little bit more like it should do now anyway, because [with] another three or four days of training Eberechi Eze will be closer, if you like, to his true form, and then by the time we play Brentford even more so.”
“When you look at their squad and their players, I think most teams will look at it and think this is going to be a very, very tough game because they’ve got some very, very good players.
“The thing about form is it could just be that some of the players are finding their feet at the club and playing as well as their reputations would suggest. Football, at any level, is not rocket science. If you are a very, very rich club and you have the ability to bring in players who actually cost a lot of money, that maybe other clubs can’t afford, sooner or later there’s a chance those players will start performing in the way that everyone expects them to perform.
“That’s basically what we will have to expect… I believe that we’ll go there, and we’ll give them as good a game as we’ve given the last three teams we’ve played, all of which are teams who are European teams. One’s a European champion, the other one’s a European champion a year ago, and Brighton are playing in European football after a very good season.
“There’ll be other teams that we’ll play in the league going forward that maybe don’t have European ambitions and maybe haven’t spent the sort of money that some of these other clubs have spent.”
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