Condition check: Chelsea

Jose Mourinho, who claimed that an injury crisis put paid to his Premiership ambitions last season, may fall back on a similar excuse again.

He had 13 players in the treatment room last week and two more were added when John Terry pulled out of the Shield after damaging medial knee ligaments and Didier Drogba had a scan on a knee injury which may mean two weeks on the sidelines.

Mourinho said: "We didn't deserve to lose. We controlled the game for 90 minutes, but what makes me really happy and confident is that they were at maximum power and we had 50 per cent of the team missing."

Andriy Shevchenko, Claude Makelele, Arjen Robben, Wayne Bridge and Michael Ballack will almost certainly be missing from next Sunday's starting line-up against Birmingham and Glen Johnson limped off yesterday, adding to Mourinho's woes.

Frank Lampard is playing with a broken toe and Michael Essien has a knee injury.

The Chelsea manager elected to leave Claudio Pizarro on the bench and played Joe Cole up front.

Without a pivotal striker, Chelsea rarely looked cohesive and there was the familiar scent of the survival football that Mourinho relied on last season.

Without Terry, they lacked leadership and Tal Ben Haim will never be an adequate replacement in that sense.

Mikel John Obi showed indiscipline against Brondby and was lucky to stay on the pitch yesterday after continually challenging the authority of referee Mark Halsey.

Mourinho needs to iron out those flaws in Mikel's character but that is the least of his worries.

VERDICT

Mourinho has spent a month working on a new system but cannot hone it with key players missing