Chelsea v Crystal Palace: Premier League – live!

19 min: Havertz breezes down the middle with grace and purpose. He slips wide left for Werner, who takes a stride into the box and curls a shot towards the bottom left. It’s an easy gather for Guaita. But what a run by Havertz, who could become a transformational signing for Chelsea.

16 min: Jorginho makes a huge nuisance of himself on the edge of the Palace box, nearly bursting through a melee in the D. But Palace blast clear, eventually, and nearly spring a counter. But Eze and Zaha can’t get it together, and the hosts breathe again. Both sides living on the edge there.

14 min: Jorginho and Werner interchange down the inside-left channel, only for the cute, crisp move to break down. No matter, Chelsea come again, Hudson-Odoi barging down the right and slipping inside for Jorginho, who shuttles further infield for Kante. He blooters over the bar from the edge of the box, a wild effort.

12 min: Eze drifts in from the left and slips a diagonal ball towards the overlapping Ward on the opposite flank. Zaha gets in the way and confuses the issue, a two-on-one against Zouma coming to nothing as the ball rolls harmlessly away. An early sign that the Chelsea defence is still very much an organisational work in progress.

10 min: Chelsea continue to ping it about. Palace continue to hassle, harry and harass. Both managers will be happy enough at the minute.

8 min: Jorginho chips inside from a deep position on the right. Abraham eyebrows a header weakly wide left of goal. Chelsea are dominating the early possession, pretty much as expected. Holding onto the ball isn’t really Palace’s MO.

6 min: Werner is down, having copped a whack on the jaw from the elbow of Ward. All accidental, and the Chelsea striker is soon up and about again, albeit with a Paddington-style hard stare, and maybe revenge on his mind.

5 min: Azpilicueta crosses viciously from the right. Havertz hopes to meet it at the near post, but Kouyate races in to head behind for another corner, just in time. Chilwell swings the corner into the mixer, but there’s been too much pushing and shoving in the box and the referee blows for a pressure-releasing free kick to Palace.

3 min: Chelsea go straight down the other end, Kante and Hudson-Odoi combining down the right to earn the first corner of the game. Ayew clears the set piece with a booming header. A nice, fresh, open start.

2 min: Eze wanders down the left and drops a shoulder with a view to skating past Azpilicueta, but the Chelsea captain isn’t buying it.

And we’re off! Palace get the ball rolling … but only after a minute of silence in memory of Matiu Ratana, the police officer tragically killed recently in Croydon. The players also take a knee. No room for racism.

The teams are out! Chelsea, who were dressed as Crystal Palace last weekend at the Hawthorns, revert to their normal blue garb. Palace arrive – after keeping the increasingly tetchy hosts waiting for a good couple of minutes – in second-choice white. Hey, it’s a long way from the temporary away changing room in the car park. Anyway, we’ll be off in a minute.

Roy discusses his team’s new attacking philosophy. “We’ve always created chances, we just haven’t always scored them. We’re trying to play with two front players instead of one and two wide, and sometimes that’s helpful in terms of attacking play. You’re denuding the midfield to some extent but giving yourself more chance up front. But in terms of principle, nothing has changed. Often people’s impression of your attacking play depends very much on how many goal chances you create and how many goals you score.” I’ll go out on a limb here and suggest that’s the first time the verb “denude” has been used in a pre-match interview on BT Sport. Will Self’s appearances on Newsnight have nothing on this.

Frank Lampard gives you a cast-iron no-touchline-brouhaha guarantee … or your money back. “I’ll always stand my ground and be respectful,” he tells BT Sport. “I’m not just defending myself, I’m defending Chelsea, we’re working hard to do things right and there’s a lot said sometimes on the line. Roy’s different to all of them, the biggest gentlemen in the game. I’ll be very surprised if me and Roy are head to head come Saturday morning!” So let the love-in commence.

Could this be Callum Hudson-Odoi’s final appearance in a Chelsea shirt for a while? The young midfielder may be Bundesliga bound. Here’s Jacob Steinberg with all the latest from behind the curtain at Stamford Bridge.

Chelsea make four changes to the XI picked for the League Cup defeat at Tottenham. Out go Fikayo Tomori, Mateo Kovacic, Mason Mount and Olivier Giroud; in come Thiago Silva, N’Golo Kante, Kai Havertz and serial Palace-botherer Tammy Abraham, who has three goals in his last four against the Eagles.

Palace are unchanged. Roy Hodgson names the same team that lost 2-1 at home to Everton.

Chelsea: Mendy, Azpilicueta, Thiago Silva, Zouma, Chilwell, Kante, Jorginho, Hudson-Odoi, Havertz, Werner, Abraham.
Subs: Arrizabalaga, Pulisic, Tomori, Kovacic, Giroud, Mount, James.

Crystal Palace: Guaita, Ward, Kouyate, Sakho, Mitchell, Townsend, McCarthy, McArthur, Eze, Ayew, Zaha.
Subs: Milivojevic, Dann, Meyer, Hennessey, Benteke, Kelly, Riedewald.

Referee: Michael Oliver (Northumberland).

Crystal Palace don’t have a great recent record against Chelsea: they’ve lost the last five meetings. In that sense, this looks every inch the home banker. But things are never quite that simple, are they.

For a start, Chelsea have yet to convince this season. Fair enough with so many new faces to slot in, and a couple of big names missing injured to boot, but whatever the justification, the performances are what they are. Curate’s eggs the lot of them: an uneven win at Brighton, a comprehensive home defeat to Liverpool that nevertheless hinged on a scuffed one-on-one and a missed penalty; that topsy-turvy 3-3 thriller at West Brom. Good luck correctly predicting which Chelsea will turn up today. All available evidence suggests the smart money goes on both.

The same could be said for Palace, who have been OK at home against Southampton and Everton, with varying results, but spectacularly good at Old Trafford, where their 3-1 win flattered Manchester United. Making a confident call on this lunchtime’s performance looks another fool’s errand. Especially as their star man Wilfred Zaha has scored in a win at Stamford Bridge before, three years ago, a little bit of positive history that will give Palace succour in the face of that five-match losing sequence.

This is set up rather nicely, then, with a big Chelsea win and a Palace shock both realistic outcomes, as well as everything in between. Fun times lie ahead, and we haven’t even considered Frank Lampard’s touchline hairtrigger going off yet again. Bielsa, Klopp, Mourinho … he won’t have a go at good old Roy, will he? Surely not. But the match … it’s on!

Kick off: 12.30pm BST.