Blame game comes easy for Blues boss

THERE'S Samuel Eto’o for Chelsea at Atletico on Tuesday and Eden Hazard is struggling for fitness too. I blame Mike Riley.

We know Branislav Ivanovic is also suspended and that Fernando Torres is pants, throw in the defeat by Sunderland and it’s not exactly the best build-up for a Champions League semi, is it?

Still, it gives Jose Mourinho all the excuses in the world should it all end in tears at the Vicente Calderon.

The fact is, I can still see Chelsea getting through. You can’t help but cast your mind back a couple of years to that run to the European title, a run punctuated by performances that fluctuated between the ordinary and the average, yet they still went and won the thing.

Atletico look like something of a Spanish version of Mourinho’s Chelsea, all muscle and organisation and a knack of winning big games.

So, Chelsea to qualify though a bigger betting heat as far as I’m concerned is the Championship ding-dong between Reading and Middlesbrough.

Reading are really struggling at the moment with one win in six and one-time certainties for the play-offs are making a right pig’s ear of staying the course.

Boro had won four in a row prior to going down to Millwall and they look like a side on the up to me. Three of those wins were against Derby, Brighton and Burnley.

I’m not even going to bother going down the ‘yeah, but they’ve got nothing to play for’ route, cos I’ve never bought into that. I will, instead, but into a bit of the 3-1 that they nick all three points.