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| Vardy and Ivanovic contest a high ball in Chelsea's 3-1 win at Leicester back in April |
LIFE is about to get a whole lot tougher for Jamie Vardy.
Leicester's man of the moment will be Chelsea's No 1 target when they meet tomorrow night as last season's champions trail the top team of this season so far by a massive 17 points.
Vardy's major part in that is not lost on Mourinho's men, which is why defender Branislav Ivanovic delivered a chilling warning to him last night.
Ivanovic believes there is only one way to stop Vardy at the moment - and that is to give him a good kicking!
The big Serb said that he and his fellow defenders won't hesitate to rough up Leicester's new record goalscorer if that's what it takes to stop him. And if they can catch him that is!
Ivanovic, who admitted that stopping Vardy would be hard, warned: "If kicking him helps it is normal. Some strikers don't like it when you kick them. You kill their confidence.
"But he is doing really well and his confidence is very high at the moment. He never stops and that is very difficult for a defender. I think it will be very hard."
Ivanovic also claimed that getting something at Leicester will be a lot tougher than it was knocking Porto out of the Champions League last week. And we're not talking about the Vardy factor here.
"The Champions League is a completely different style of football," he said. "Porto liked to play more football. They were not physically strong like Premier League teams so we will need to work much harder at Leicester."
Ivanovic admitted that Chelsea's stuttering Premier League form this season had also been hard to take.
"The Premier League is very difficult this season," he said. "There have been a lot of surprises and unexpected results.
"At the moment we cannot think about any particular place in the table. We have to be realistic. We have to play every game as a separate game.
"It is a different kind of pressure and a different approach to the Champions League. We have to be really strong and we know the Leicester game will be harder than against Porto."
But Ivanovic, who looked nearer to his best than for a while against the Portugese champions, is confident that Chelsea can still rescue their Premier League season and at least finish in the top four.
"Every season here is so long," he continued. "But the good thing is we can still change it. We can have a good season, but we have to be focused on every game."
That is why Ivanovic has put thoughts of a new contract when his present one runs out shortly on the back burner for the time being.
But he wants to stay at Stamford Bridge, and as he added: " I am happy and I am trying to do my best.
"I know I didn't start the season well, but I am back. I hope the results will be good for the team and I will be good as well.
"I hope and I think we will have time to speak about my future later."
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