More of a Cup team than a League team right now!! #CFC

First of all, let me take this opportunity, to once again, apologise to everyone following this blog for not updating it after matches have taken place! Judging from the date of my last entry, it looks as though I’ve abandoned it, but I reassure you that I am still using this blog, and I prove that with a long-awaited update. This blog, won’t be too long. Instead, I will briefly explain the Chelsea matches that I have missed, and how they made me feel afterwards… so here goes…

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Chelsea 2-1 Wigan Athletic – Premier League – 7/4/12

If it hadn’t been for a last gasp winner from Juan Mata in this game, we would have felt utterly embarrassed, and as a result, lost our grip on catching Arsenal and Tottenham for a 4th placed spot! Branislav Ivanovic scored from a rather debatable offside goal when Raul Meireles fed in a ball to him from outside the penalty box, which, to his credit, was a quite remarkable position to fizz one in, but it was clear to see that Ivanovic, at the time the ball was played, was behind Wigan’s defence before he slotted in the opening goal on 62 minutes, resulting in offside, but no linesman waved it off, and I wasn’t complaining.

Not until Mohamed Diame slammed one in for Wigan with 8 minutes to go.. that was it I reckoned, all was lost! If we couldn’t beat a struggling team at home.. a team we were able to take to the cleaners with an 8-goal thrashing of them 2 years ago, then our hopes of catching our fellow Londoners were all but dashed.. thankfully though, after Fernando Torres had hit the post with his effort, Juan Mata followed the ball in, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief. A win is a win, 3 points is 3 points, both of those statements are true.. but a scrappy win against any struggling side can also bear question marks over the team’s half empty approach to games we need to be winning in style.

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Fulham 1-1 Chelsea – Premier League – 9/4/12

I couldn’t watch the second half of this game because I was out playing football myself, but from what I was able to see of the first half, things looked promising enough.. the performance was far from impressive mind, but a penalty from Frank Lampard after a foul committed by Danny Murphy seemed enough for me to go to the session feeling happy enough, but we held out with 8 minutes to go until bloody Clint Dempsey turned in a header from a corner, and that seriously bollocked any chance of a top-four finish.

Dempsey, like Louis Saha, always from out of nowhere at least, manages to put one past us. I remember one time in a game away to Fulham, where we were 2-1 up at Craven Cottage, I think it was the 2008-09 season, correct me if I’m wrong, but Dempsey scored a last gasp goal against us that year, preventing us from winning 3 points. Dempsey is a jammy bugger, but he is also a fantastic player for Fulham, and I can’t knock him for that.

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Tottenham Hotspur 1-5 Chelsea – FA Cup Semi-Final – 15/4/12

Quite simply put… this has to be the greatest match I have ever watched this season, and Chelsea didn’t have to play sexy football for me to say that!! Just to say, we thrashed the Spuds at Wembley and sent them back to where they belong… the dump… is an understatement of its own!

We had to wait until the stroke of half time to see our first goal however, and it was certainly worth the wait too! As we have seen countless times over 8 seasons, Didier Drogba’s trademark movement before scoring, is to back into a defender, use his strength to control the ball, turn on the defender, and then bang it into the net, well he certainly did that for the first goal, turning on, who else but W*lliam G*llas.. you couldn’t have asked for the perfect goal.

Then in the second half, came the all important debate. Was it really a goal?? Juan Mata’s toe punt towards Tottenhem’s goal seemed to have been blocked before the ball had reached the line. Many had said the goal should never have stood because of that reason, but the officials issued it as a goal, regardless, and I wasn’t complaining over a 2-0 lead!

Then, a lack of concentration cost us dearly as Tottenham pulled a goal back through Gareth Bale, as Emanuel Adebayor was put through by Scott Parker’s cutting through ball, Cech palmed Adebayor’s effort, but it somehow ended up with Bale, who rolled it into an empty net.

Thankfully though, Ramires helped us maintain our two-goal advantage by dinking the ball over ex-Chelsea keeper Carlo Cudicini, followed by a quite breathtaking free kick from Frank Lampard, and to round off the rout, Florent Malouda slotted in Chelsea’s 5th goal, and secured our passage into the final showdown with Liverpool.

All in all, you could not have asked for a better day at the office! Not only did we secure our 4th final in 6 years, but in doing so, we thrashed and shat on the Spurs in the process, and that, for me, as a Chelsea fan, is a stunning moment!!