Papa Bouba Diop, Sean Davis, Sol Campbell, Lassana Diarra and Jermain Defoe will all be missing tomorrow and Harry Redknapp has hinted that he will field a weakened team as other first-team players are tired.
That means the likes of Hermann Hreidarsson, Lauren, Richard Hughes, Arnold Mvuemba and Kanu are likely to start the game against Luiz Felipe Scolari's side.
Chelsea will be without Deco, Ricardo Carvalho and Michael Essien but Didier Drogba and Michael Ballack are expected to play in their bid to get fit. Scolari will also rest players but there is no doubt that their team will look a lot stronger than ours.
This game is a thankless task made even harder by a ridiculous injury list. I suspect that we will try and make it difficult for Chelsea but I suspect that they will have too much quality for our weak midfield and I don't expect our ultra-slow partnership of Crouch and Kanu to cause too many problems to the tight Chelsea defence.
The main worry is the extent of our injury problems and how many are going to be out for a significant amount of time. The other piece of news worthy of mention is that the Premier League are happy after their investigation into Pompey's ownership as it revealed that Sacha is the owner of PFC and not his father like reports in Israel claimed.
Lets see if "bare bones" Pompey can cause an upset tomorrow!
Predicted Starting Line-Ups
Pompey
GK: David JAMES
RB: LAUREN
CB: Hermann HREIDARSSON
CB: Sylvain DISTIN
LB: Noe PAMAROT
RM: John UTAKA
CM: Richard HUGHES
CM: Arnold MVUEMBA
LM: Nadir BELHADJ
CF: KANU
CF: Peter CROUCH
Chelsea
GK: Carlo CUDICINI
RB: Juliano BELLETTI
CB: ALEX
CB: Branislav IVANOVIC
LB: Wayne BRIDGE
CM: John OBI-MIKEL
CM: Michael BALLACK
CM: Frank LAMPARD
RWF: Salomon KALOU
LWF: Florent MALOUDA
CF: Didier DROGBA
My Prediction
This will be extremely tough for us and if you look at Chelsea's squad compared to our injury ravaged side (there will be a lot of youngsters on the bench tomorrow) then there is only one winner here unless James atones for his Man City nightmare with the performance of his life!
Pompey 0 Chelsea 2