Premier League make official decision ahead of Chelsea vs Fulham
Chelsea and Fulham are both back in action on Boxing Day
The Premier League have announced that Sam Barrott will referee Chelsea’s clash against Fulham on Thursday 26th December. Lee Betts and Nick Greenhalgh have been appointed as the fourth officials.
Meanwhile, Sam Allison is on fourth officials. Paul Tierney is on VAR with James Mainwaring as his assistant.
Chelsea are currently sat in 2nd place in the table behind Liverpool. They have had a decent season under the guidance of Enzo Maresca so far.
The Blues drew 0-0 away at Everton last time out and weren’t able to find a winner at Goodison Park. Speaking after the stalemate, Maresca said: “I’m absolutely happy. I just said to the players I’m more happy today than the Brentford game. The reason why is I was quite worried about this game. It’s a tricky game, a tricky stadium, a tricky team.
“They are defensively top. They are one of the five best teams in Europe in terms of clean sheets. You struggle to create chances against them. It was not an easy game. You have to deal with and learn to play different games: long balls, second balls, channels, set-pieces. Football is not only how good we play on the ball. It’s also how you defend and how you deal with that. I’m very proud today.”
He added: “In general, you always struggle to create chances against them. We knew it would be a tough game in terms of clear chances. For sure, we could have attacked better, but there was not space for Cole [Palmer]. In the last half-hour, we tried to move Enzo [Fernandez] into an attacking midfielder, with Malo [Gusto] next to Moi [Caicedo] to change something.
“Overall in this type of game, knowing you are not going to create many chances, you have to be clinical. First half, Nico [Jackson] had a one-v-one with the keeper, hit the post, and we had another two or three chances inside the box. If you are able to be clinical there and score, probably the game becomes different, but until that moment you’re going to struggle.”
As for Fulham, they were held to a 0-0 draw with Southampton on Sunday afternoon. They couldn’t break down the Saints and had to settle for a point at Craven Cottage.
It was a frustrating afternoon for the Whites and their manager Marco Silva said: “I have to say that it’s a missed opportunity for us to climb in the table. In our last four results, they were going to have a bigger impact if today we took a step forward and won the game. We respect Southampton but these are the type of games we need to win at home and we didn’t create enough chances in the game.”
The Cottagers are 9th in the league and have 25 points on the board from their first 17 fixtures. They have once in their last six outings and will be eyeing more victories over the festive period.