Andre Villas-Boas has spoken for the first time this week about this Saturday's home game...

Squad news

He has yet to decide who will replace injured Petr Cech in goal for the visit of West Bromwich Albion on Saturday.

Cech is out for three to four weeks having injured his knee during training on Wednesday morning.

'He fell awkwardly with weight on top of him, and he stretched a little bit a medial knee ligament,' reported Villas-Boas.

'We expected much worse when we saw the incident. The good news is that it is just for three to four weeks.

'We have two goalkeepers, Hilario and Ross Turnbull, and tomorrow we will make a decision which one will start and which one will be on the bench,' he continued.

'Tomorrow we prepare more strategically for the game and then I will let the players know first.'

Apart from long-term casualty Michael Essien, David Luiz is the other player out injured due to the thigh problem he has carried since returning from the Copa America.

'David Luiz can't make a return yet but it is nothing too dramatic,' said Villas-Boas.

'Next week he will be joining us because he already had a light session today and he will come back next week to full training, so it will be a step-by-step recovery for him.'

John Mikel Obi has again declared himself available for selection despite his father's abduction in Nigeria. New signing Romelu Lukaku is also available while Oriol Romeu returned from the Under 20 World Cup yesterday and trained for the first time at Cobham today (Thursday).

Facing West Brom

Villas-Boas wasn't present for Chelsea's 6-0 demolition of The Baggies at the Bridge in the opening game of last season, but one of his coaching team was.Roberto Di Matteo was at the time the manager of this weekend's opponents.

'I think Robbie is too depressed about the result last season to talk about it,' smiled Villas-Boas. 'We just had some banter about it but he is now on this side and he just wants to win, like we all do.

'Of course it will be emotional for him seeing people he is close to. For sure he will salute those people.

'Last year was an excellent result and we have two games at home now and we must do everything in our power to get three points from each of them,' the manager insisted.

'A total of seven points can get us into a good position but West Brom as we saw last week presents a very difficult challenge because they held Man United, the Champions League finalists, up to the 80th minute.

'They had a couple of good chances and they favour good football, they play short and quick in between them which is something important for the spectacle, so it is a difficult game for us.'

Villas-Boas revealed himself as a fan of how Roy Hodgson asks his teams to play.

'They showed last week against Man United that Roy's values of football are being taken into account. That is why he took Fulham to the Europa League Final.'

In other news

Villas-Boas has confirmed that the signing of one more midfielder is possible in the wake of Essien's cruciate injury, although he hopes the Ghanaian will be back sooner than the original six-month prediction as early treatment is going well.

He also predicts that contract negotiations with Didier Drogba, who has a year left on his current deal, will be completed satisfactory, and stated that reportsNicolas Anelka wants a transfer are untrue.

'Drogba is one of the most important and representative players of the club and his willingness to continue is 100 per cent,' he explained. 'It will be because of that that we will reach an agreement.'

The manager returned to the subject of last Sunday's game at Stoke and his post-match comments about the amount of pushing and grabbing that went on in the two penalty areas during the game.

'The reporting of my words was extremely unfair to what I said,' he pointed out.

'I had a stance of saying the pushing and the shoving was in both boxes and that the referee needed help, and I was not complaining.

'Fortunately enough the Stoke manager is a sensible person and admitted what I said is completely different to how it was written.

'It is a physical game and it will happen in any box in the Premier League so we just have to deal with it.'

Chelseafc.com