John Terry could say what he liked after last night’s game against Nicosia but unless we get our act together in the next couple of days, I can see us getting battered on Sunday.

I’ll keep this short and sweet because as with our game against Wigan at the weekend, the less said the better. Of course nobody would have expected us to go out there and walk all over the Cypriot side, underdogs or not, but after our defeat in the league last weekend, something resembling a convincing performance wouldn’t have gone amiss. Reminiscent of Cluj in the last campaign though, it was all a bit painful really.

Ancelotti made three changes to the weekend, with Kalou and Ivanovic covering for the suspended Drogba and Bosingwa, and Belletti coming in for the injured John Obi Mikel. Unfortunately though, whilst the personnel might have changed a bit, the performance hadn’t.

We exploited the space they gave us early on and took the lead through a Nicolas Anelka goal on seventeen minutes but whilst we controlled the remainder of the first-half, we did little else. It didn’t get any better in the second half either, with Apoel looking livelier and even Petr Cech given a bit of work to do.  We just didn’t create anything and were probably fortunate to have come away with a win in the end.

It was all a bit painful on the eyes and aside from Joe Cole finally returning to European action, there wasn’t anything to feel optimistic about in the slightest.

I really can’t summon up the enthusiasm to say a lot more except, in the words of my old school reports ‘could do a lot better’.

Filed under: Europe, Match report