Totesport 7/4 May Be "Special" For Jose

Tagged under: Champions League

Jose Mourinho will come face-to-face with his former club Chelsea for the first time in the first leg of the sides' Champions League last-16 tie on Wednesday night. The self-styled 'Special One', sacked by Chelsea owner Roman Ambramovich in 2007, has already been vocal in the media, stoking up the game by saying recently that the Stamford Bridge club would have been better keeping him as manager 'if they wanted to win more Premier League titles.' With the Italian enjoying home advantage in the first-leg, Mourinho's men are clear favourites ahead of a ball being kicked and are available at 7/4 with Totesport to win tonight. Mourinho however, doesn't think his past relationship with current Blues players will help his bid for glory with Inter. He said: "I know Chelsea well but that doesn't mean that it's any easier." "Sometimes it's more difficult because when you know so much about the team, if you don't decide what is the right information to give to the your new players about your old players, you can get into trouble. "I played against Porto with Chelsea the year after I left, so in the 2004/05 season. "It was my team, my players and I knew everything about them, but it was not easy. "We won one game and lost the other one." Chelsea's Ivory Coast striker Didier Drogba, signed by Mourinho in 2004, is in red-hot form this season, with 19 league goals and three European strikes during the present campaign. Prolific English international midfielder Frank Lampard, who missed Saturday's 2-0 win over Wolves at Molineux, is expected to reutrn to the Chelsea starting line-up. Paulo Ferriera misses out but defenders Alex and Juliano Belletti should come back into contention. However, Russian Yury Zhirkov won't play because of a calf injury and Ashley Cole continues to be sidelined, causing a selection headache at left-back. Inter have worries over goalkeeper Julio Cesar, who was in a minor car accident at the weekend. Mourinho, who may have to call upon veteran stopper Francesco Toldo, said of whether Cesar will play: "It's not certain." "I don't know how he wakes up tomorrow, maybe he wakes with his eyes closed and he can't see the ball. "After a car accident you never know. "You can have a reaction 24 or 48 hours after."

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