Chelsea will go into tonight's crucial Champions League match against Hertha Berlin at Stamford Bridge with a flea in their ear from the chairman, Ken Bates, who has publicly questioned both the attitude of the players and the team selections of Gianluca Vialli in recent Premiership games.

The team may be just a point away from qualifying for the second group phase in the European tournament but three straight Premiership defeats have dragged them down to mid-table.

Bates, speaking on Chelsea ClubCall yesterday, insisted that the Premiership was not being put on the back burner to concentrate on Europe. "We want to win the championship, Champions League and FA Cup. I was concerned that we went out of the League Cup to Huddersfield because the team we fielded should have won the game."

Vialli has rested players like Didier Deschamps, Dan Petrescu and Tore Andre Flo between Champions League matches, but the plan has come unstuck. "I think, possibly, errors of judgment have been made in certain games with the rotation system," said Bates, "and, to be fair, Vialli has acknowledged that." Yesterday Vialli confirmed this. "We have made mistakes," he said. "I like criticism as long as it's constructive criticism."

Bates placed as much blame on Vialli's players. "We should have beaten Watford and Derby," he declared, "but we didn't and that's not necessarily down to team selection, it's down to the players' attitude.

Vialli said he had to rotate the team because "we're not the youngest team in England". Tonight's match may be a stand-off since Chelsea and Hertha need only a draw to put themselves beyond Milan. But Chelsea need a win to top the group and so be seeded for the next stage. Frank Leboeuf is Chelsea's main doubt with an ankle injury.

Meanwhile, Rangers will have to do some serious rewriting of history if they are to move through to the next phase of the Champions League by beating Bayern Munich in the Olympic Stadium tonight, writes Ian Archer.

In their favour the Rangers manager Dick Advocaat is not much interested in history. Precedent indicates a win for the Germans: they have yet to be beaten on their own ground by Scottish opponents and Rangers have scored only one goal on four visits to Munich.

But the measured response from Advocaat to this is: "We beat Bayer Leverkusen on their ground last season." The impression he wishes to make is that this is a Rangers side who have moved up the European pecking order under his guidance with wins over Parma and PSV Eindhoven this season. Only one Scot, Barry Ferguson, is certain to play but to beat last year's European Cup finalists, who must win to make progress, is still asking a great deal.

Rangers may leave out the winger Neil McCann as a strategic option, but up front Advocaat must choose between out-of-form Rod Wallace and Jonatan Johansson, who scored a hat-trick of his own at Aberdeen. And to complicate matters, Jorg Albertz limped out of last night's training session with an ankle injury after a collision with Giovanni van Bronckhorst.