Picture exclusive: Blues are white hot

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But the Blues will be missing a number of first-team stars through injury and doubts over their fitness persist ahead of Sunday's Community Shield.

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Three wise men: Terry, Ballack and Cole

Although the club insist the injuries to Terry, Andriy Shevchenko, Paulo Ferreira, Arjen Robben, Claude Makelele and Michael Essien are not serious, they were of enough concern to keep them out of a full-scale practice match at their training ground yesterday.

There has been no let-up during Chelsea's exhaustive build-up to the season, and many of the side will be forced to play through the pain barrier during tonight's friendly against Danish side Brondby.

All six casualties travelled to Copenhagen later yesterday, but there are increasing concerns in the Chelsea camp about the number of players struggling for fitness so close to the start of the season.

They open their Premiership campaign at home to Birmingham six days after facing United at Wembley in the season's traditional curtain-raiser.