CHELSEA head coach Liam Rosenior has played down suggestions his Stamford Bridge debut against London rivals Arsenal tonight is the biggest game of his managerial career.

Just over a week on from his appointment on a six-and-a-half-year contract, the 41-year-old will lead the Blues into this evening’s League Cup semi-final first leg against the Premier League leaders.

Rosenior arrived in west London following an impressive spell with French club Strasbourg after almost leading Hull to the Championship play-offs following an interim stint in charge of Derby.

“People will look at it that way; I don’t see it that way,” he replied when asked if the visit of the Gunners will be his biggest match as a manager.

“Every session that I take, every meeting that I take, every game that we play is the most important thing. I live in the now.

“It is the most important game because it’s the next one. I mean that. If you start to prioritise games or think something is more important than the other then you’re not focused.

“I don’t care if it’s a pre-season game, I’m doing it at my maximum, and I expect that from whichever group I work with.”

Rosenior launched his tenure with Saturday evening’s 5-1 FA Cup third-round win at Charlton after watching last week’s 2-1 Premier League defeat at Fulham from the stands.

He became Chelsea’s eighth permanent boss in 10 years by succeeding Enzo Maresca but dismissed talk of attempting to ‘buy time’ in the job as he focuses on trying to reach Wembley.

“I want to win every game I play, it’s very simple,” Rosenior said. “If you don’t take care of the next game, those trophies don’t exist, it’s as simple as that.

“I’m not thinking about buying time. I’m thinking about winning the next game.

“I felt that against Charlton, I feel that against Arsenal, and I will feel that against Brentford [on Saturday].”

While Chelsea are already 18 points adrift of Arsenal in the top flight, they battled to a creditable 1-1 draw with 10 men when the club’s met in November following a 38th-minute red card for midfielder Moises Caicedo.

“We’ve been working tactically on Arsenal from the moment I came into the club,” Rosenior said.

“We know what an important game it is. We’ve watched all of their games, analysed every aspect of their game.

“This team have already proved this year with 10 men, we caused problems [for Arsenal], and we want to do the same again.”

Arsenal boss Mikel Arteta said it is his “mission” to knock Chelsea out of the League Cup and deliver a first major trophy in almost six years after last season’s “painful” semi-final exit.

The Gunners manager said: “Football gives you another chance. We have been really consistent again in this competition and now we have to knock another big team out to be in the final. That is the mission.

“Hopefully we have learned from last year because it was painful, especially in the manner that the games went, and the amount of chances we missed to go through. So this year we want to be better and more efficient.

“When you get to this stage in the competition, you get to the final, and you get it over the line and win it, it brings a different kind of energy.

“It brings belief and the sense that the objective is very, very close and that is a massive motivation for everybody.”

Arteta could be missing four defenders today, which may force him to play a makeshift back four with Christian Norgaard on call to play alongside Gabriel at centre-half.

Riccardo Calafiori, Piero Hincapie and Cristhian Mosquera are all certainly out, while there are significant doubts over William Saliba’s fitness.

Leandro Trossard, who has scored seven times this season, is another who may not be fit enough to play.