International friendly action has made it a strange week of preparation for the weekend's Premier League curtain-raiser.

Andre Villas-Boas's squad has been severely limited in numbers due to national team call-ups, meaning there will be just a couple of days for final plans to be put into place before we meet Stoke City at the weekend.

An ever-present throughout pre-season has been Steve Holland, whose elevation to first team coaching staff from reserves means he too awaits a Premier League debut this weekend.

'We're all excited about getting up and running,' he told the official Chelsea website. 'It's always great to get that first game done, you can train and train but in the end it's about games.

'When you've had six or seven pre-season games, they're competitive but not the real thing and we're all ready now for the real thing and Sunday will present a big task. Stoke in their own stadium is a fixture that will create problems for a lot of top clubs, a difficult first fixture and one where we will be respecting the opposition and problems they can cause.'

Holland speaks from experience, having spent five months as City's Academy director before arriving at Stamford Bridge near the start of the 2009/10 season.

'It will be a full stadium and a fantastic atmosphere, and we're raring to go,' he continued.

'They get fantastic support from Peter Coates, the chairman, who invests a lot of his own resources into the club and Tony Pulis has paid tribute to that. It's a very well-run club, and their improvement has been great.

'Last year they had an FA Cup final, European qualification and have never really been in any trouble since they were promoted and I wouldn't expect them to be this year, which is down to the work of Tony and his staff.

'I had a very enjoyable five months at the club and worked for some terrific people who were very good to me and very understanding when the opportunity to join Chelsea came up.

'I'll always be grateful for how fair they were with me, and it is a bit extra special going back there but it's all about getting down to business and getting three points on the board.'

Training today will see an increase in first-team participation with the return of England's John Terry and Ashley Cole, though Frank Lampard is expected to stay at home with a throat infection, after their friendly with Holland was postponed due to rioting in London.

'The English internationals will be back in. The problems that are going on are awful for the people living in those areas and the game has been moved because of the risk, so a by-product of that is that we get the players back that little bit earlier,' Holland explained.

'The younger players have come in in the last few days and it helps the senior players in terms of quality and numbers to do the work we want to do.

'A lot of the work is based on team play, therefore 10 against 10 in a variety of situations, so it helps to have those numbers during an international break because we are decimated here during such a week.

'Secondly it also gives the younger players the opportunity to impress the manager and already we've seen the likes of Chalobah, Kalas, Billy Clifford and McEachran have opportunities in this pre-season, so it is something they're aware of and that opportunity can be there.'

Chelseafc.com