• Premier League

Luiz and Eto'o to miss Saints game

Fernando Torres is likely to step in up front for Chelsea © PA Photos

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David Luiz and Samuel Eto'o have been ruled out of Chelsea's home match with Southampton on Sunday, which will likely mean Fernando Torres makes his first start in over a month.

Torres suffered an injury just after the 2-1 win over Manchester City on October 27. Eto'o has suffered a similar muscle problem to the Spaniard, while centre-back Luiz is still not 100 percent fit after a knee problem.

"David trained today with the team for the first time, but it was the first time and it doesn't look to me as if he's in condition for this weekend," Jose Mourinho said. "Eto'o is out, but the information I have is that he has a grade one muscular injury, which we think is two weeks.

"I'm throwing into the air a number, but when I say two weeks it will not be a month: 10 days, 15 days, 17 days... around two weeks."

The absentees are unfortunate as Chelsea look to bounce back from the poor performance and 1-0 defeat to Basel in the Champions League in midweek.

Mourinho admitted his disappointment with that display but pointed to mitigating factors as well as the fact Chelsea are in a generally good position.

"I never tolerate [performances like against Basel], but I have to live with it," he said. "It's football, especially in teams in the building-up process - not the end product, not a team with years and years of work together or with maturity enough to keep that stability match after match.

"But I didn't like the performance, of course not, and we will try everything not to repeat.

"The good thing in the Champions League is that, when we felt the pressure, we always reacted and performed. When we responded to the first defeat, starting the matches in Bucharest and against Schalke, we were under pressure and knew if we made a mistake we'd be in big trouble, and at that moment the team reacted and played very seriously.

"Probably, in this game, because we felt the situation was under control, added with some fatigue - I could easily identify that - we had a bad performance.

"We still have some work to do, and hopefully Sunday we will be ready because, in this moment, our situation is fine. If I forget the performance from the last match, our situation is fine.

"We are a close distance to the leader [in the Premier League]. We are qualified for the last 16 in the Champions League. We will play the Capital One Cup quarter-final. We are okay. Our situation is okay. We have to improve stability in our game, we have to improve aspects. Of course we have to. We also have to improve individually, especially with the younger players, but we are okay."

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