Chelsea will look to regain the three point lead which they held prior to Manchester City's win in the early kick-off on Saturday. After three convincing wins in a row in all competitions, Mourinho will look to win at a stadium which he is yet to be victorious at in the Premier League with Chelsea.

Last season saw Stoke defeat Chelsea 3-2 late on with a magnificent long-range effort from on-loan Liverpool winger Oussama Assaidi. However, since t hat win, Stoke have played Chelsea twice - both at Stamford Bridge - losing both without scoring a goal and conceding four.

A win for Stoke could see them as high as 10th place, which is currently occupied by Brendan Rodgers' Liverpool. Former Chelsea player Mark Hughes will surely want to achieve another win against his former employers.

"It is a bit early in the week, but Bojan has trained for the past two days which is a positive for us," the Stoke manager proclaimed in response to questions about injuries. 

He went on to say  "Hopefully, he will be fine. We certainly don't envisage there being any real problems with him ahead of the game."

Whereas, Mourinho was acknowledging the fact that his side could be presented with a very tough challenge, just as Arsenal were in a 3-2 defeat a couple of weeks ago.

Mourinho said, "They are a good and difficult side. They have that important base that Tony Pulis gave them: physicality, set-pieces, aggressive, direct. This was the base of their success since they came to the Premier League."

He then recognised the fact that Hughes has kept a similar ideal with his own ideas. 

"In the last couple of years with Mark Hughes, without losing that identity, he has brought some of his own ideas, some players that can have more than that physicality.

"We have to go there and play our game but we know well their qualities as a team and their qualities individually and we have also to adapt to it."

This will be a very intriguing tie given that Stoke will feel that they have a very strong chance of getting something out of this game, due to the result they attained last year, despite Chelsea being a very different team to the one that lost at the Britannia Stadium last season.

Date: Monday 22nd December 2014

Time: 20:00 GMT

Venue: Britannia Stadium

Referee: Neil Swarbrick

Team News

Stoke: Bojan Krkic and Marc Muniesa should both have recovered from injuries which were keeping them out of this significant fixture. However, Stephen Ireland is still a doubt with a knee injury according to Mark Hughes.

Chelsea: Thibaut Courtois is expected to be put back into the starting lineup ahead of Petr Cech after recovering from a muscular injury. Both Didier Drogba and Kurt Zouma were substituted after picking up injuries during the Capital One Cup tie in midweek against Derby, but they are both expected to be fit for this upcoming clash.