Chelsea will face Everton in the Carling Cup in a bid to progress into the quarterfinals of the tournament at the Goodison Park on Wednesday.

Chelsea come to this game on the back of a 1-0 defeat against West-London rivals QPR - a game now infamous for an alleged racist insult directed by Chelsea skipper John Terry to Rangers' defender Anton Ferdinand.

Terry has not traveled to Merseyside, for the match, as he is on four yellow cards already and manager Andre Villas-Boas is not willing to risk him getting another booking and be suspended for Arsenal's visit this weekend.

The Blues are expected to send out a weakened side, much like in the previous round, with experienced figures left on the bench in order to come on in the latter stages.

Everton, on the other hand, will be boosted by their late 3-1 win over Fulham during the weekend, and is expected to make it quite hard for Chelsea with a full-strength squad. The Londoners haven't won at Goodison in their last three attempts and manager David Moyes will be hoping to extend that streak.

Chelsea will be without the suspended trio of Didier Drogba, Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa as well as John Terry who is saved for Saturday. The Blues are expected to start with youngsters Oriol Romeu and Josh McEachran.

When these two sides faced each other in the Premier League last week, the Blues ran out 3-1 victors with Juan Mata an instrumental figure in unlocking Everton. However, expect this to be a different game.

Prediction

It will be a hard-fought encounter and Everton will have hopes of qualifying into the quarterfinals. However, Chelsea have enough strength in the bench to get through this one.

Everton 1-2 Chelsea

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