Nineteen days after our last league fixture, Chelsea return to the north-west again. Club historian Rick Glanvill and club statistician Paul Dutton get set for September's first challenge…
TALKING POINTSSaturday evening's return to club action pits Jose Mourinho against Roberto MartÃnez, another manager (like Steve Bruce and David Moyes already this season) who is no novice to the Premier League but will face the Blues for the first time with his current club.
Against Chelsea to date, MartÃnez has one win and one draw stacked up against six defeats, including the famous 8-0 of 2010, when tactical novelty was undone by a red card. Those games were with Wigan, where he delivered the club's first major silverware in the FA Cup last season on a very tight budget. Despite his reputation for expansive football, though, the Spanish manager's league record is not so impressive.
At Swansea between 2007 and 2009 he earned promotion from League One and ended eighth in the Championship. From 2009 he steered Wigan to 16th in successive top-flight campaigns, then 15th and finally 18th - and relegated.
Nine-times English champions Everton, who presently lie 15th and could slip as low as 18th before the 5.30pm kick-off, have expectations above those of the lowly Latics but with a similarly tight purse-string. Since switching to Merseyside, Martinez has posted three successive draws in the league, including two 0-0s. Visitors Chelsea, who recently held Man United to the same scoreline at Old Trafford, were the only team from the capital with the recipe to beat Moyes's Toffees last season.
KEY STATEverton's only home Barclays Premier League defeat last season was against Chelsea in December.
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Having counted the players out and counted them back in again, we can set the stress of international games and the inevitable injuries to one side until mid-October, returning to the relative bliss of domestic football.
One traveller in particular deserves congratulations. New England caps centurion Frank Lampard joins 10 other current or former Chelsea players to have reached that international milestone.
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