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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!!

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First of all, I would like to make an apology to anyone who reads my entries for not updating my blog immediately after this game had finished! I was a little busy at the time, and as a result, I never got round to writing it.

And now, onto the game…

In Lisbon, we were able to take home with us, a 1-0 victory thanks to Salomon Kalou’s late strike, assisted by Fernando Torres.. and in the home meeting at Stamford Bridge, there was no excuse not to finish the job. Thankfully, albeit a wobbly end to the game, we got the job done, and may I say, the goal from Raul Meireles at the end was an absolute gem!

Things started off so well for us, when Ashley Cole was bundled down into the penalty area by Benfica’s Javi Garcia, and Frank Lampard had no problem converting the penalty to make it 1-0 to us at the Bridge, and a very comfortable 2-0 lead on aggregate.

What really bugged me throughout the game, were all the massive chances we had of sealing the tie, giving us an easy passage through to the semi-final tie against Barcelona. Torres, Kalou and Juan Mata all had big chances to score the second goal, and at a time where Benfica only needed 2 goals to go through, it was very crucial, just so the nerves would be put to rest.

Come the end of the game though, us fans were living on the tips of our nerves. We put our foot off the gas for one second, and Benfica levelled up the score with 5 minutes left to go. Javi Garcia nodding in a header from a corner, which meant another goal for them would take them through. The scores would be level, but Benfica would have scored more away goals, thus sealing our fate.

But later we had to thank a man, a former Porto superstar that Benfica supporters love to hate, Raul Meireles, with a quite breathtaking bit of solo display to waltz up the field with the ball following a failed Benfica attack, and place a sweet strike into the near top corner of the net and seal our semi-final showdown with Barcelona.

It was a very nervous end to the game, which does worry me to some extent. If we are going to beat a club like Barcelona, we need to show none of that. We all know how the Catalans can punish teams who show a lot of nerves. Thankfully, from what I’ve been reading, people like Roberto Di Matteo and John Terry show none of that fear, but instead reveal unfinished business with the Spanish giants, like when they knocked us out in 2009 through Iniesta’s last gasp strike.

But no team is invincible. We have beaten them at Stamford Bridge before, and we have faced them as many times as any of these other big teams. I’ve watched matches where Jose Bosingwa actually had a good game at the Nou Camp, and Dutchmen like Khalid Boulahrouz had Ronaldinho in his pocket for a whole 90 minutes, and who could forget the quick 3 goals at the beginning of…. yeah you should know the rest of that game!

As a Chelsea supporter, I don’t fear Barcelona.. in fact I pity them.. they play amazing football, but they don’t have warriors like John Terry, who would want nothing more than bringing a Champions League trophy to the King’s Road for the first time.

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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!

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The beginning of a tough set of fixtures have begun for us now, starting with Leicester City today, then Manchester City during the week, and then Tottenham the same weekend, not to mention the Aston Villa game away from home, whom we’ve had major problems with form-wise away from home in recent years.

The good thing however, is that Roberto Di Matteo could not have asked for the perfect start during his short tenure as interim manager. Especially when our old guard, Didier Drogba, John Terry and Frank Lampard slapped their names on the scoresheet to revive our Champions League status with the impressive 4-1 win over Napoli at Stamford Bridge, and it’s those types of victories that are big enough to bring back the confidence in the team, steady the ship, and… maybe, just maybe, catch Arsenal and snatch 4th place. But they are going to take some stopping, especially when Robin van Persie is not disappointing Arsene Wenger in terms of scoring goals.

But today sees us play Leicester at the Bridge, in hopes that we can secure our 3rd successive semi-final in 4 years. I believe with the right mentality, and the right tactical approach, we can overwhelm our visitors and fight on in the rest of the competition.

The way the season has gone for us as a whole, particulary during the times of AVB, I don’t think we’re the favourites to win the trophy because Tottenham are still in the competition, and Liverpool are starting to find their feet under Kenny Dalglish.. BUT.. we ARE capable of winning big games, as we saw in the game against Napoli.

What does seem to linger at the back of my mind however, is that when AVB managed his first game in August, his team went on to be unbeaten in 5 matches before Manchester United beat us 3-1 at Old Trafford, so REALLY.. Di Matteo still needs a few more games to prove that he is the real deal. Generally however, It’s going to be an interesting couple of weeks for us. We need to keep fighting like we have been doing in the games against Birmingham, Stoke and Napoli. The players are fired up now, so there will be no excuse for defeat today.

One final thing I must say before I finish this blog. My thoughts and prayers go out to Fabrice Muamba, who is fighting for his life after he collapsed during yesterday’s Bolton match away to Tottenham. He is currently in a “stable” condition, and in this case, I hope and pray for his recovery, and my condolences are with his family at their very difficult time.

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My Chelsea team to face Leicester: Cech; Bosingwa, Ivanovic, Cahill, Bertrand; Ramires, Mikel, Lampard; Sturridge, Torres, Mata
Subs: Hilario, Cole, Romeu, Essien, Malouda, Kalou, Drogba