Andre Villas-Boas has spoken for the first time about the opening league game of the season, and he has yet to decide his starting 11.

Squad news

Fernando Torres, who came off early in Spain's midweek international with mild concussion, is expected be available for Sunday's match at Stoke.

'Torres should be okay to be selected for the team travelling up to Stoke,' Villas-Boas reports.

'Yesterday [Thursday] he still couldn't remember a couple of things from the game and from before the game, but he was back in training today and he is up for selection for the squad. David Luiz will certainly be out of the game, he has been suffering for quite some time and it will keep him out for one more week, hopefully less.'

The manager says that if Torres is fit, both he and Didier Drogba are likely to be played in the game.

'Maybe also Anelka,' Villas-Boas adds.

'Sturridge is the one suspended from last season but a couple of forwards are threatening for that position. We are favouring a 4-3-3 formation in our beginning, that's what we have been playing in pre-season, and we have a couple of players threatening for that central striker's position.

'This week has been disrupted because of the international break. The players got back yesterday, most of them with more than 60 minutes and a couple of them with 90 minutes played. We have given them a full recovery session yesterday.

'Today they have trained for half of the ordinary training session for the rest of the players. It is difficult because it disrupts your work, it disrupts your preparation. We are fortunate enough to have one more day extra regarding the teams that play on Saturday, this day extra is good for our preparation.

'Regarding the starting XI, we are getting there in terms of selection. Tomorrow we will evaluate them again and decide.'

Facing Stoke

The weekend match will put Villas-Boas under the Premier League spotlight for the first time, but he isn't expecting to be headline news.

'I doubt I am the high-profile manager of the Premier League,' he says.

'There are extremely successful managers in this league. I respect them a lot and hopefully I can bring myself up to these standards. We guide ourselves with the highest standards possible, looking for excellence and looking to win back a title that escaped us last season. I think we will do everything in our power to win it back.

'We have gone past a good pre-season and everybody is feeling already excited to come back to competitive games and hopefully this first challenge. It is an important challenge for us. It is Stoke away. It is one of the magnificent teams of the Premier League, a team that last year, although finishing in the bottom half of the table, managed to get wins at home.

'They have a good empathy with the public and it is a very emotional stadium, so it's good to have this sort of high challenge on the first day of the league.'

In other news

This weekend's games are played in the wake of scenes no-one wished to see on the streets of cities up and down the country. Villas-Boas hopes the 'big kick-off' can be another sign of a return to normality.

'With the events that have been going on, the impact of the Premier League starting is something that motivates people,' says the Chelsea manager, 'and hopefully people will be able to stop what is happening.

'It is something very, very wrong when it reaches this extent of aggressiveness and this level of criminality. The police have made a significant and hard-working job to get things done. As long as everybody is together to solve these problems, it is a good sign that we can sort this out right away.

'Hopefully we can sort this out once and for all and get back to a feel-good environment and focus on the things this country needs to focus on.'

There was also an update from the manager on the transfer of Romelu Lukaku who has been at Cobham since Belgium's international match.

'We are outlining details. Lukaku is one of those players who we couldn't afford to lose because he has such potential. That's why we made a move in the market, even though our team is competent enough in that attacking sector.

'Remembering what he has been doing in the last couple of years since starting at a very young age of 16, it was a threat that we would permit this boy to escape and so I moved things on a little bit to try to bring him to the club. I think it will be a question of days, hours, before we get it done.'

Chelseafc.com