QPR vs. Chelsea Team News: Chelsea Facing Centre Back Crisis

Even though Pep has dominated the WAG front pages for the past twenty four hours, this is still a Chelsea blog, and that means that some of the news that came out of Di Matteo's press conference today was really, really alarming.

In short, Gary Cahill, David Luiz and Branislav Ivanovic (last game of his suspension) were all ruled out of the QPR game on Sunday, leaving Chelsea with only one fit centre back...John Terry, who has two broken ribs.

Yikes. This isn't a good position to be in. The most likely person to step in is Jose Bosingwa, and if you think that is an able replacement, then you are mad. While Bosingwa did play quite well at centre back against Barcelona, he did have the benefit of having ten of his teammates in his penalty box helping him, and the advantage of knowing exactly which way Barcelona we're going to attack. Dealing with Messi is extremely different to dealing with Bobby Zamora, and one can only panic when you imagine Bosingwa trying to deal with the repeated aerial raids that will invariably come our way against QPR.

That said, there are other possibilties for Chelsea, like Oriol Romeu dropping in to the back four, or likewise with John Obi Mikel or Michael Essien. There's also been some talk of Paolo Ferriera or Sam Hutchinson getting a run out in the middle, but Paolo Ferriera appears to be dead and Hutchinson hasn't played for the reserves for a while, so it's unlikely he'd suddenly be appearing in the first team.

The only other solution I can think of is to recall Jeffrey Bruma, or otherwise we can enjoy a perfectly good Sunday being ruined by moments of sheer panic every time the ball enters our half.