League form will go off the roof when Chelsea meet Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League round of 16, according to the Blues’ club secretary David Barnard.
Chelsea have been paired against the Ligue 1 champions for the third successive year in the knockout stage of Europe’s elite club competition, after manager Jose Mourinho said last week that Laurent Blanc’s men were the opponents he wanted to avoid in the round of 16.
PSG, 17 points clear at the top of Ligue 1, will go into the tie as favourites regardless of whether Chelsea recover from a nightmare start to the Premier League season that has seen them lose eight of their first 15 matches between now and the first leg at Parc des Princes on Feb. 16.
But Barnard insists how Chelsea fare against the French giants will depend more on whether they rise to the occasion of the tie than their wider struggles.
“It’s a knockout game and it depends on the form of the two teams over those two legs,” he told BT Sport. “I don’t think you can take league form into it. They said that about us just before the Porto game, that our form was bad, but we saw the quality of players we had and we came through with no problems at all.”
PSG emerged victorious on away goals at the same stage of last season’s Champions League, claiming a 2-2 draw at Stamford Bridge despite twice trailing and playing the majority of the match with 10 men to avenge their quarterfinal exit to Chelsea the previous season.
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