Blues have left new signing Romelu Lukaku out of their Champions League squad for the group stage of the competition.
The Belgium international, who arrived in the summer for £18m, from Anderlecht was left out of the 22-man A-list squad. UEFA confirmed that Chelsea have picked three less than the maximum 25-man squad as they did not have eight homegrown players – meaning they could only pick 17 non-homegrown players.
That left André Villas-Boas with some difficult choices, whilst the forward line is not firing on all cylinders yet, the Portuguese coach has a wealth of expereince available to him.
He has opted to include Didier Drogba, Fernando Torres and Nicolas Anelka and Salomon Kalou, the latter could prove an unpopular choice amongst the fans.
AVB has then included fellow countryman Paulo Ferreira as defensive cover at the back. Young Ryan Bertrand, has also missed out as he is classed as “association trained”, of which their can only be four in the squad – this places went to Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Ross Turnbull and Daniel Sturridge.
The Belgium star is bound to be disappointed at missing out, but this could lead to him getting to play in the games surrounding Champions League games.
By Scott Balaam
Twitter @theshed11
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