Chelsea v Stoke City team news: Diego Costa starts on the bench as Loic Remy gets the nod from Jose Mourinho

 

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Striking Starter: Remy picked ahead of Diego Costa
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Tom Sheen4 April 2015

Chelsea star Diego Costa will start from the bench after not recovering in time to face Stoke City.

The striker, who has 19 Premier League goals this season, had to pull out of the Spain squad because of hamstring injury but has not been deemed fit enough to start at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho will turn to Loic Remy to lead the line after he scored the winning goal coming on as a substitute against Hull a couple of weeks ago.

Mourinho makes three changes from that team, with Cesar Azpilicueta, in for Filipe, Luis at left-back, and Oscar in for Ramires the other chang

For the visitors, Mark Hughes also makes three changes with Phil Wollscheid in at the back and Glenn Whelan and Charlie Adam coming in to stiffen up the midfield.

Erik Pieters, Marko Arnautovic and Peter Crouch drop to the bench.

TEAMS IN FULL:

Chelsea Starting XI: Courtois; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta; Matic, Fabregas; Willian, Oscar, Hazard; Remy.

Substitutes: Cech, Zouma, Filipe Luis, Ramires, Cuadrado, Drogba, Diego Costa

Stoke City Starting XI: Begovic; Cameron, Shawcross, Wollscheid, Wilson; Ireland, Whelan, Nzonzi, Adam; Walters, Diouf.

Substitutes: Butland, Bardsley, Pieters, Muniesa, Arnautovic, Sidwell, Crouch.

GETTY

Speaking ahead of the match, Mourinho conceded that Diego Costa might not feature against Mark Hughes' side.

"Diego trained yesterday and today with the group. He's not injured. I don't know if I start with him or not because muscular injury, two days with the group, I need to make a decision on him," Mourinho added.

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