STEVE McClaren's biggest fear is not travelling to Stamford Bridge to take on a rampant Chelsea - it is the prospect of having to tell Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink he is not starting the game.

Hasselbaink is desperate to be involved this afternoon after he scored 88 goals in his 177 appearances for the Blues.

But, while his three strikers have been in prolific form recently, McClaren is toying with the idea of playing just one man up front as Boro look to wreck Chelsea's 100 per cent home record later today.

That one man would be Aiyegbeni Yakubu, leaving Hasselbaink to warm the bench despite his recent strikes against Manchester United and Fulham.

With Mark Viduka also in fine goalscoring form, McClaren boasts an embarrassment of attacking riches to rival even that of the Premiership champions.

But, given his emotional ties to Stamford Bridge, it is Hasselbaink's fate that is giving him most cause for thought as he plots Chelsea's downfall.

"Would you like to tell Jimmy that he isn't playing at Chelsea?" asked McClaren, who will continue to ponder his selection until the last possible moment this afternoon. "You'll find out if I've had to tell him because you'll be able to see the scars!

"There are different things that come into it. We knew we would get a great performance from Jimmy at Alkmaar because he was playing against one of his former teams.

"Maybe we'll get a similar response against Chelsea, but I might put him on the bench because another player has similarly strong claims.

"The strikers have accepted that they can't play in every game. I remember a comment from Jimmy at the end of last season after he'd played well over 40 games.

"He was our top scorer with 16 goals but he said that, if he'd played ten less games, he would have ended up with more than 20. It was an interesting comment and we thought about it during the summer.

"Yakubu is excellent when he's playing up front on his own and that's a move we might have to try against Chelsea."

Last season, Franck Queudrue was Boro's second-top league scorer with five Premiership goals. Yakubu has already passed that mark this term, with Viduka and Hasselbaink having shared another five goals between them.

Only Chelsea, Manchester United and Arsenal have scored more times than the Teessiders, and McClaren is understandably delighted with the consistency his strikers are showing.

"The three of them are on fire," he said. "Yakubu is up and coming and he's strong and powerful. He's got a good eye for goal and, in that respect, he's not dissimilar to Jimmy.

"Jimmy is an out-and-out goalscorer. He might be out of the game for ages, then he'll pop up with the winning goal.

"Mark is a little different. He's an old-fashioned centre-forward and we can use him as a target man. He likes to play with his back to goal and bring other players into play, but he's also lethal.

"The common denominator with the three is that they all score goals and they all win you football matches."

Whether one of them will win this afternoon's hinges almost entirely on Boro's sporadically porous defence.

While they have not conceded a goal in more than 450 minutes of European football this season, McClaren's men have shipped eight in their last five Premiership outings.

The inconsistency is clearly a cause for concern and, with Stuart Parnaby, Gareth Southgate and Ugo Ehiogu all nursing minor strains, it will be another patched-up backline on display this afternoon.

Southgate is likely to recover in time but, while Boro have changed both personnel and system this season, their faults have tended to stem from more basic mistakes.

"The problem isn't going to be scoring," said McClaren. "It'll be keeping a clean sheet at the other end.

"The majority of goals we've conceded have come from individual mistakes. It hasn't been systems or organisation, it's been down to individual error. That's a concentration thing and it could also be down to fatigue.

"Look at Franck Queudrue. He's made a couple of bad mistakes and they've both cost us a goal."

There will be no room for error today as Chelsea look to extend their ten-point lead at the top of the table.

The quality of the opposition means Boro's expectations are low but, with his fellow North-Eastern managers currently feeling the heat, McClaren is taking nothing for granted.

He only signed a new four-year deal last month but the England number two admits it would not take much for him to find himself under similar pressure to Mick McCarthy and Graeme Souness.

"The situation changes week to week," said McClaren, who will discover the identity of Middlesbrough's Carling Cup quarter-final opponents when the draw is made on Sky TV this afternoon.

"If you lose a game at any football club you're back in that electric chair again. That's the pressure you have to live with.

"As a manager, you have to cope with everything that's thrown at you. What's happening elsewhere this week has happened here in the past.

"Expectations are massive at every club. Mick McCarthy did a fantastic job to get Sunderland into the Premier League, but the pressure is on him after 14 or 15 games.

"That's the nature of the job. Any top achiever, in any walk of life, will tell you that the biggest pressure is the one you put on yourself.

That's what you have to cope with every day."

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