Archive for the ‘Juan Mata’ Tag
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!!
With every game we win, I’m really starting to trust Roberto Di Matteo’s philosophy because judging from the results we’re getting under his leadership, albeit an interim one, it’s giving us all the confidence we need to turn our season around, and hopefully end the season, either with a Champions League place, or even winning the Champions League.
And our great form under Di Matteo continued today with a very well-deserved 4-2 away win over Aston Villa. Considering that this was only our 2nd win at Villa Park in 12 meetings, I’d say this was a key win today.. and Arsenal lost 2-1 away to QPR, so it’s smiles all round for us blues. If Swansea can defeat Spurs tomorrow, then that would just be the icing on the cake!
Daniel Sturridge got us off the mark with a tap in on 9 minutes, and then it stayed 1-0 until Branislav Ivanovic popped up to nod in our second goal. Villa fought back however through goals by James Collins and Eric Lichaj to make it level at 2-2, and suddenly, all hope looked bleak.. another game at Villa park without a win was looming… until Ivanovic smashed in our third, and then Fernando Torres, after 6 months without a league goal, ended his drought with a last minute strike.
Speaking of Torres, I think he deserves all the recent plaudits given to him by the Chelsea fans. It wasn’t very long ago that he was playing second fiddle to Didier Drogba because he was on the decline under Andre Villas-Boas, and there were question marks on his future at the club.. now under Roberto, he has found the sparkle in his form, and is now linking up well with Juan Mata and Daniel Sturridge in attack, and it looks like we’re finally seeing the Torres of old.
Another player I want to talk a little briefly about is Mata. When I first saw the team sheet before the game, I said to myself, “oh goodness me, why is he starting again for Chelsea? He NEEDS to rest!” .. but to tell you the truth, Mata certainly plays well for someone who’s played 4 straight matches without being able to rest.. he was one of our star performers until he had to come off for Florent Malouda.. definitely deserved the plaudits, and should have definitely scored a goal for himself.
And just a little more here about David Luiz coming off at half time? What was wrong with him. Some people say that he came off with an injury to his ankle. Well, when he walked off the pitch to be replaced by Gary Cahill, he was walking perfectly fine to me. Maybe it was a slight injury to his ankle, and nothing more than that. I reckon he will be fit for the home leg against Benfica next week.
In conclusion, great win! Especially at a venue where we don’t win very often, and Roberto Di Matteo is certainly getting it right in terms of rotating the squad, and letting players work in the way that they want. It was never like that under AVB.. players emotions and feelings were all over the place back then, and hence the barrage of defeats.. but under RDM, players play because they care about the club, and the turnaround of results in all competitions we’re in really proves that. Can we snatch 4th place from Tottenham… I say YES… we can!
Going into the away match at Benfica tonight, my immediate thoughts were, “it’s an away match, the best we can salvage is a score draw and hope we can finish the job at Stamford Bridge”, however, what we got, was not only a quite remarkable first away victory in the Champions League, but the fact that Roberto Di Matteo was proving to everyone that he’s not just a caretaker manager!
The players must have studied Benfica’s tactical game prior to the match and then put their preparation into practice on the training pitch.. a little similar to AVB’s job when Mourinho was in charge. But, whatever it was, everything seemed to fall into place. Benfica were rattled at times, Chelsea’s defence were in the right positions to stop Benfica from creating and attacking, and it all worked like a charm!
David Luiz and Ramires in particular just didn’t stop working! Ramires with his darting runs in central midfield, winning crucial free kicks in the middle of the park wherever necessary, while Luiz’s dazzling defensive diving headers just kept Benfica’s attack guessing. It’s this kind of ambition which shows that some of these players are still determined to keep going in Europe, and knowing that our hopes of landing a top 4 spot in the league, meaning qualification to next year’s competition hang in the balance, so it’s important that we keep going and get these important results.
And about Luiz, I’ve never witnessed a player with a strong desire of playing for Chelsea as much as him, since John Terry! Every time he plays for the club, he’s always giving 100%, and not only that, he’s probably one of the most “happy-go-lucky” players we have at the club. I almost felt insulted when I read an article from the Daily Mail the other day about Barcelona, planning a £35m bid for him in the summer! It obviously won’t happen simply because he loves playing for us! The only slight fault I have in Luiz’s play however, is that sometimes, he enjoys going forward a bit too much, and if he’s too far up the pitch while the opponent has the ball, it means we’re lacking numbers at the back, although, we do have players like Michael Essien or John Obi Mikel to cover for Luiz while he’s up the pitch.
As for our goal, well, you can’t argue that Fernando Torres is showing everyone that he’s slowly starting to look like his old self again.. despite turning 28 a couple of days ago, he’s getting there. He doesn’t have to score goals to put on a good show, and his assist to Salomon Kalou for the goal just proves that!
I think we can finish the job at Stamford Bridge. With a 1-0 lead going into that second leg against a side who didn’t seem all that confident tonight, on their home ground.. we can easily score another 3 goals against them. If we can notch 3 past Valencia, and save ourselves from disaster with 4 against Napoli, we can certainly beat Benfica at home. The only thing that worries me however, is complaicency.
Well, I’ve just finished watching a rather exhausting 2-0 victory for Chelsea against Birmingham City in the FA Cup 5th Round Replay at St Andrews. We really needed that result BADLY! I think, if we didn’t win that game, there would have been further turmoil, but thankfully, the goals showed up on our side of the scoreline tonight!
Juan Mata and Raul Meireles scored two second half goals… Meireles in particular with an absolute rocket, which was set up by the man with 5 more years to his name, Ramires… and here was me thinking a few weeks back that they looked way too similar in the midfield, and it wouldn’t work! The game was later groan-worthy after Mata had a penalty saved later on, but thankfully, Chelsea held on for 2-0, and now we face a home tie against Leicester City in the Quarter Finals.
Are we finally on the right track? It’s too early to say at this point.. the worst is yet to come in terms of fixtures for Di Matteo; Manchester City away, Tottenham at home, but this result is surely one to make us Chelsea fans wear smiles on our faces, as the vast majority of our travellers, take that long trip back home to South London from Birmingham, knowing that at least “something” is going our way! Whatever happens, I have my full backing for Di Matteo, even though Roman Abramovich does seem to still be looking to bring either Pep Guardiola or Jose Mourinho to Stamford Bridge next season!
Petr Cech, who captained the side tonight, said at the end of the game “the players don’t have to prove anything” … I agree with him! The players have got the talent … they need to add a bit of pride and passion to that, and they would have proved to everyone, that Chelsea this season, are not dead yet!
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