Thibaut Courtois fears Crystal Palace will be out for revenge tomorrow because Chelsea clinched the title against them last term.
Chelsea beat Palace 1-0 in May to secure top spot with three matches remaining, sparking celebrations on the pitch after the final whistle.
Courtois believes Palace’s players will use that day as motivation to cause an upset at Stamford Bridge.
He told Standard Sport: “This year they will definitely want to beat us. Last season we won against them at home to be crowned champions.
“It is never a good feeling to lose a game like that and know you were the team the champions beat to win the League. I think they will do everything now to beat us.
“We have seen they have a lot of quality. They have fast attacking players with a lot of technique, so we are expecting a tough game and have to be careful with them on the counter attack. If they put up a strong block and we find difficulty in getting past that, we know they have fast strikers to find the gap behind us.”
Chelsea need a victory to keep in touch with leaders Manchester City, who are already five points clear after just three matches.
However, the Belgium goalkeeper admits he also has the Champions League on his mind. Chelsea were drawn with Porto, Dynamo Kiev and Maccabi Tel-Aviv in the group stage yesterday and are looking to bounce back from a disappointing campaign in Europe last term, when they were knocked out by Paris St Germain.
Courtois added: “To go out at the last 16 stage was hard to take. PSG are a good team but, obviously, we wanted to win the competition.
“A team like Chelsea always have to go to win the Champions League and titles. Obviously it won’t just be Chelsea who want to do that.
“But we will try to get as far as we can and after the disappointment of last season, our motivation is really high to do something great.”
Captain John Terry is suspended, so Gary Cahill and Kurt Zouma are expected to start in central defence.
