Chelsea need regular centre-back pair in time for Robert Lewandowski

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Chelsea learned this week that they have a mouth-watering European tie against Bayern Munich to look forward to in 2020.

The Blues were drawn against the Germany heavyweights in the last-16 of the Champions League and have a two-legged showdown to try navigate to reach the quarter-finals.

There will be obvious memories flooding back from Chelsea’s historic victory in the Champions League final back in 2012 and once again the English team are going to go in as underdogs.

Frank Lampard’s side don’t have the first leg until 25 February and they will host Bayern at Stamford Bridge to start, where it’s imperative they try get a positive result.

The away leg comes on 18 March at the Allianz Arena and it’s a huge task on paper to get a result there.

It’s obviously a long time before Chelsea need to turn their attention to Bayern, but it’s imperative that during the next couple of months Lampard fixes his centre-back area.

With goal machine Robert Lewandowski likely to lead the line for Bayern on 25 February, it’s imperative that the Blues have some kind of consistency by then at the back.

The Poland international has already netted 29 goals in 23 games across all competitions this campaign and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see him smash the 40-goal barrier by the time the teams meet.

Lewandowski, 31, is certainly one of the elite centre-forwards in world football and he’ll make the most of any vulnerability in back.

Lampard’s dilemma is over his preferred centre-back combination and he needs to stick with the same pair over the next few months to help them build a partnership.

It looks like Kurt Zouma and Antonio Rudiger are perhaps the option moving forward, as the latter is now back from injury and the combination has been used in the past two matches.

But fellow centre-backs Fikayo Tomori and Andreas Christensen have also had their fair share of minutes this campaign.

It’s great to have so many options in the heart of defence, but Chelsea need to establish the pecking order and the same duo need to play consistently to improve as a pair.