Archive for the ‘Premier League’ 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!
In the middle of March, after the 4-1 win over Napoli in the Champions League, it got me thinking.. is this the crucial stepping stone needed to lift our spirits and get as much confidence as possible to push for 4th place in the Premier League and be once again playing Champions League football?? … Then, a 5-2 defeat of Leicester City in the FA Cup Quarter Finals emerged with Fernando Torres getting 2 goals and 2 assists during the game… and there I was again, thinking and pondering to myself… has Torres finally found his touch of scoring goals again, and is he the one to steer us in the right direction??
Then, along come Manchester City and Tottenham, and in both those games, we’re only able to squeeze out a point, and then, I was like… “oh screw that then”!
There are a few points I’d like to go over in terms of the sheer frustration that was bellowed during the disappointing 0-0 draw at home to Tottenham today. First and foremost, Daniel Sturridge… I don’t know what it is with him, but he has turned from being one of the hottest prospects to come out from a loan spell with Bolton Wanderers, to being one of the most selfish and useless wingers in the Premier League. There’s no problem with the way he gets to the byline and out-runs his opponents for pace, but he has GOT to work on his passing, and just stop going for glory all the time, because it’s beginning to get really tiresome for a Chelsea fan, like myself, to watch something as selfish as shooting from such impossible angles, and hitting nothing but the side netting; or just getting as forward as possible, only to pass it straight to the opposition, and waste all of that effort getting into that space.
Another point I’d like to talk about is the contribution of Jose Bosingwa. Now, before I ramble on about how useless he is generally (most notably going forward), I have to commend his efforts at trying to keep tabs on Gareth Bale during the game. Bale is not an easy player to mark, as he is incredibly quick, and sometimes gets past lightweight players like Bosingwa with absolute ease. But, credit to Bosingwa, he did okay keeping him quiet at times. However, going forward, he is as much use as a brain-dead monkey on a unicycle. The guy just cannot make a good pass… and whenever he does bottle it with that kind of pass, always expect to hear three quarters of the Stamford Bridge faithful groan with agony at an opportunity wasted at the hands of Bosingwa! Put it this way, if a player like Ivanovic was fit, not only would Bale be in his pocket all game, but his determination would have shined through even more in terms of going forward, as we have seen in a lot of recent games. Anyone remember the Extra Time goal against Napoli??
One person I must talk about in great depth, and in a positive way, is Gary Cahill, or “Gazza” as I like to call him.. not to be confused with one England great Paul Gascoigne, but right now, I use the term, Gazza, for our current generation of players… in this case, Cahill. He has barely been at our club 2 months and he’s already won my charms. He has that style of defending that makes me feel as though John Terry cloned himself 7 years ago and that clone hadn’t aged. Seriously, if Cahill had not have been in our back four against Tottenham today, we would have lost 3-0. He’s quick, he gets back, he’s not afraid to go in for a tackle, and he’s stable, just like JT was 7 years ago. I say, if we can keep hold of Cahill for at least 3 years, he will be so important to us! You read it here first!
Last of all, the overall synopsis of the game. The first half was probably the most dull and depressing half I’ve seen this season, particularly when Tottenham looked as though they opted for a dull approach to the game, and, knowing us.. not capitalising on the opposition’s faults. As for the second half… well, I don’t know what Harry Redknapp said to his players at half time, but whatever he said, his side certainly came out of the blocks and immediately took the game to us.. especially in terms of the number of shots that were seen during the game. Tottenham managed around 13 shots, and we were only able to achieve 5. Now if you can consider our overall record against Tottenham at the Bridge over the last 20 years in the top flight, that’s just fucking disgraceful.
In conclusion, a 0-0 draw at home, is not good enough to push “The Turds” and “Lucknal” all the way in terms of fighting for 3rd/4th place in the League. I think we’re completely out of it now. If you look at our run-in compared to the likes of Tottenham, they have an easier time of it than we do, while “Lucknal” just keep winning at the moment, and I just cannot see us chasing them all the way, if all we’re going to do is just keep dropping points at every opportunity. It makes our Champions League campaign even more of a priority, if we’re going to compete in it next season. The thing is, I don’t see us dethroning Barcelona with the kind of form they have this season, but strange things have happened, and in this bygone era, you just never know what football might throw your way!
In what proved to be a disappointing result for us away to City, it was still a stern performance for us at the Etihad Stadium where no team this season has come away with a point or more, especially in defence. Gary Cahill for me, has come so far! Excellent display at the back, and I believe he is the long term replacement for John Terry!
It was in fact Cahill’s goal that gave us the lead, and at that point we Chelsea fans were all thinking of an unthinkable victory that would further propell Di Matteo’s populaity as our interim manager… but it was cut short in the 78 minute when Michael Essien handled in the penalty area, and Sergio Aguero netted from the spot, and then, yet another late goal conceded as Samir Nasri sealed our fate.
To be totally honest, I wasn’t expecting a victory tonight, because City have been so strong at home all season, while our overall form, particularly under AVB was more than just a questionable one.
The truth is, that ever since we had gone 1-0 up through Cahill’s strike, it was nothing but City threat… our midfield just didn’t want to know half the time, and players such as Bosingwa and Ashley Cole just didn’t possess any fight in them whatsoever! I think our main dagger to the heart in the whole game was the injury to Ivanovic. Had he have not got that knock in training, I would have expected to see a more vibrant Serbian defender at right back, and players such as Nasri and Silva would have had to work a lot harder.
Overall, I can’t fault the defence for the defeat because they pulled off a stern performance, keeping out City at home for just under 80 minutes, but I can blame some of our midfielders for not taking the initiative of City’s careless mistakes and frustration. Still, even though we lost, it was still a valiant attempt!
As most Chelsea supporters would have figured out already, March is going to be one of the toughest months for the club! Not just on the mentality side of things, but also, taking into account the string of games we’ve got coming up! Come the 31st of this month, we would have been able to answer a lot of questions… one of them being, “is Roberto Di Matteo good enough to become our next permanent manager.”
This month in particular, the games are big enough for Di Matteo to prove that he has what it takes to bring back the togetherness of the players, and steady the ship. The 2nd leg against Napoli in the Champions League (losing 3-1 from the 1st Leg), The FA Cup Quarter Final home match against Leicester City, and then Away and Home ties in the league against Manchester City and Tottenham respectively, followed by Aston Villa away.. and the reason why I consider that as a difficult game, is because at Villa Park, our record is shocking! Only 1 win there in 11 visits.
Today however, our home game against Stoke City, is argueably one of our easier games this month, so you can obviously understand why 3 points is imperative here! We are currently 5th in the table, with Arsenal 3 points ahead of us with a home game against Newcastle tomorrow, which, as far as I’m concerned, they’ll have no trouble winning because Robin van Persie is banging them in for fun at the moment, while Newcastle’s away form has been questionable of late. Take Tottenham’s 5-0 hammering of them at 3 point lane as an example… and I thought that game was going to be a hard-fought contest!
Everyone needs to forget about Manchester City this season! They are over the hills and far away on another planet at the moment, whereas we are nowhere near title contenders this season. Yes, we can blame the players for the dismal performances of late, which has led to AVB’s sacking in as many months. What we must not blame the players for however, is their willingness to finish this season as high as they possibly can! People like John Terry have acknowledged that the players must take the blame for the manager’s demise, and now they need to rectify what has gone wrong at the club, and fix it, starting with today’s home game against Stoke!
I think we can beat them today! I have that belief in me because I am a Chelsea supporter, and I follow the club through the good times, and the bad ones! A vast majority of supporters on the TalkChelsea forum threatened to burn their Chelsea shirts because they had had enough of the club chopping and changing managers every five minutes. I won’t say names, but to those people planning to do that, you need to remember a few things.
Clubs like Rangers and Portsmouth are in turmoil financially. They are currently fighting to even exist as clubs at the moment, trying to find buyers so that they can carry on competiting every season. In 2003, we could have been like those clubs before Roman Abramovich came along waving wods of cash and bought us from Ken Bates! During his time, we’ve been able to win Leagues and Cups. With that said, Roman getting angry at the players is not a negative thing, but more of a positive one! If you were running a football club you really cared about, you wouldn’t just walk away and let the management and board get on with it, you would take the opportunity to hit the players where it hurts, and get them to start thinking more along the lines of the team, if they are to remain as Chelsea players.
“You are playing for your futures”, says Roman! Too bloody right they are!!
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My Chelsea team to face Stoke: Cech; Ivanovic, Luiz, Cahill, Cole; Ramires, Essien, Lampard; Sturridge, Drogba, Mata
Subs: Hilario, Bosingwa, Bertrand, Romeu, Malouda, Kalou, Torres
As every Chelsea fan found out last Sunday morning, Andre Villas-Boas was given his marching orders by Roman Abramovich, and then launched a scathing attack on some of our players, blaming them for the Portugese’s exit! Why? .. Was it because they were underachieving on the pitch week-in-week-out, or was it due to the fact that there was just no trust between the players and the manager?? Well, this is what I’m here to try and get to the bottom of.
When AVB was first appointed as Chelsea manager back in June 2011, there were some high hopes from most fans, not only due to the boasting of his unanamous success in the Portuguese League, and the Europa League with FC Porto, but also because he had worked with the club before, in 2005, under Jose Mourinho’s wing! Villas-Boas back then, had been installed as Mourinho’s left-hand man… a silent, yet intelligent personality, whose job, was to gain as much information on each opponent as possible, and offer it to the Chelsea players in the form of DVDs, which they could watch and study, before putting all of their preparation into practice on the pitch!
The interesting thing, was that it all worked like a charm back then! With the use of Mourinho’s so called, “boring” approach to every league match, Chelsea won the Premier League in 2005, and then again in 2006, becoming the first London-based team to win back-to-back Premiership titles since it’s rearrangement in 1992.
With that said, there was plenty of positives to ponder ahead of AVB’s second spell at the club.. however, there were question marks over his appointment… although AVB had boasted a jaw-dropping season with Porto the previous year, at only 33, the Portuguese was still at a very young age to be managing in one of Europe’s toughest leagues, resulting in many fans to believe he was either overrated or just “too young” to take over! I for one believed in this at first because he was much younger than more experienced tacticians such as former boss, Guus Hiddink, who was also linked with a return to the club. Quite frankly, it was Hiddink I was mostly hoping for.
Instead, Roman Abramovich decided to spend £13.5 million to release AVB from his contract at Porto, and appoint him as Carlo Ancelotti’s successor! And my god did it backfire!! Only 1 win in 7 games in all competitions. I hate to say it with such negativity, but that’s the form of relegation standards!
Now that AVB has gone… it leaves me with something to ponder over the coming months… what now for the club?? Will we really struggle to confirm a top 4 finish and qualify for the Champions League under Roberto Di Matteo? If we don’t qualify for Europe, will some of our players get fed up and leave at the end of the season? What role will Roman Abramovich play in the proposed massive exodus at the club this summer??
The main question I want to know however… is what will happen to long servers like Frank Lampard at the end of the season? The player many fans are led to believe to be one of the firestarters that led to AVB’s demise at the club.. along with Ashley Cole, and suprisingly Michael Essien! But was there really a spat between AVB and Lampard? Or was it just the fuel needed to further encourage news hungry media to spread all over the back pages??
If you ask me.. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a bit of both! There had been a number of times where AVB had dropped Lampard for games, and fairly important ones I might add…. in his place, comes a former Liverpool employer, Raul Meireles (whom, if I’m honest as I can be, has not impressed me at all). Yes, I understand the idea of giving the younger generation a chance to show the Chelsea fans their true worth. But I watched Chris Kamara on TV a few weeks ago, and he said something rather important about the likes of Lampard and Drogba, “If they know the club inside out; If they are there to be used, just use them!”
At this point, I give you readers who follow Chelsea, a question.. what is the best way forward to get this club back to where they used to be? Keep the old guard, (Lampard, Drogba, Essien, Kalou, Malouda, Bosingwa) and use them as learning mentors to upcoming talent… or, do it Roman’s way: completely rip the whole squad apart and start fresh, with a massive overhaul of new players and staff, and at the same time, giving the younger generation a chance to push their way easily into the setup?
Just remember, the second option needs to be given more of a thought than usual, because if we don’t make the top 4 this season, and we can’t guarantee Champions League football, we might lose our appeal to some of the biggest talents known to exist out there at the moment… most noticeably, a little Belgian wizard we like to call Eden Hazard.
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