CHELSEA 2-1 Portsmouth: Too Close For Comfort
Right, I’ll keep this brief because to be honest I’m losing the will to live lately.
For Ian Wright’s benefit I’ll say ‘deary me fellows, what seems to be occurring on the pitch doesn’t appear sufficient to win us chaps a trophy but we love you anyway’. For everyone else however, I’ll say ‘fuck me, I think it’s fair to say we won’t be at the top of the table much longer playing like that.’
Don’t get me wrong, we certainly dominated enough – and so we should considering who we were playing – we just didn’t do enough with the possession we had. Pompey struggled to get out of their own half for much of the first 45 and it was only a matter of time before we scored, even if far too many missed opportunities meant we had to wait a while.
The breakthrough eventually came from Nicolas Anelka in the 23rd minute though with an Alex assist but the struggle to take our chances continued, so the one goal was all we had to show for a dominant first half and we were to pay for that just five minutes into the second half. A needlessly given away free-kick from John Terry – yes, another bloody set-piece disaster – came off Ashley Cole for Piquionne to bang in.
And whilst I wouldn’t say we looked particularly vulnerable, because we dealt with any counter-attacking adequately enough, we didn’t exactly set about putting the game to bed either. Here we were, this top of the table side that’d looked so strong a few weeks ago, and we were struggling to carve out anything of substance against Avram Grant’s bottom of the table side – not entirely convincing really.
We picked up a bit as the whistle got ever closer but still looked far too close to another draw for comfort – and that’s exactly what we would have got if Ivanovic hadn’t been fouled in time added on by Marc Wilson. Fortunately, the penalty gave Lampard the opportunity to get back to doing what he does so well, and we managed to get away with all three points.
It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t convincing but it was a win.
Hallelujah.
TEAMS
CHELSEA: Cech, Terry, Ivanovic, Alex, A Cole, Ballack, Lampard, Mikel (Malouda, 64), Deco (J Cole, 58), Kalou (Borini, 72), Anelka
Unused subs: Hilario, Ferreira, Carvalho, Zhirkov
PORTSMOUTH: Begovic, Ben-Haim, Mokoena (Utaka, 85), Finnan, Hreidarsson, O’Hara, Boateng, Mullins, Diop (Hughes, 60), Wilson, Piquionne (Dindane, 71)
Unused subs: Ashdown, Vanden Borre, Belhadj, Yebda
Filed under: Match report, Rants
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It’s the same old story again isn’t it? Whenever we lose Essien the crack will wreck havoc simply because we do not look into this holding position carefully enough. How I wish Mr. Carlo would have a strategy to cover Essien’s absence so that we could quickly return to our fluid and fast flowing attacking game which, before the 4-game slump, was terrorizing every pl team. Essien was the reason our famed diamond formation rampantly attack any team because the players before him knew that he would be ‘there’ (almost permanently) to cut off opponent’s attack. Unlike Mikel, Essien would press up the field to enhance attacking options and his scoring touch and threat could easily hold back opponent’s strikers to fall back n try everything they could just to stop him because if they don’t, Essien will shoot to score. I hope to see Nemanja Matic in place of Mikel because this boy is gifted with an attacking left foot playing in Darren Fletcher’s mold. He runs and tackles hard, too. And it’s about time to cut the leash and let Kakuta terrorize the defenders in order to free up the more experienced seniors ahead of him to bring us the goals. Yes we do need goals.1-0 is as good as winning ugly or lucky. Goal difference is a high order to discourage any chasing packs. Tell that to MU. Evra wanted 6 goals fr wolves! Almost half the season’s gone and by now any pl team can easily guess who will be playing kick-off. Why not the element of quality surprise? Why let Kakuta, Matic and Borini warm the bench all the time? John Terry was entrusted into the first team at 18. He made few mistakes and grew into a captain he is today for us and England. Teams are now reading us like an exposed stack of tarrot cards. They know Chelsea minus Essien is an invitation to cross up field without the fear factor. They know once they share a big slice of possessions they may even nick for a win. We need to re-install this fear factor quick or risk throwing away the epl trophy which is there already for us to lose.
Definitely will not be looking forward to January..If we can’t do good against Portsmouth there’s no telling how well we will be doing against Birmingham and Sunderland who usually always put up a big fight.
How stupid does this page look now in light of Saturday’s matches? 2-1 win against Pompey is far better than any 3-0 defeat.
hjc – so an unconvincing performance against Pompey is ok because a totally depleted United lost against a decent Fulham side? Are you sure about that? Because whilst United will be getting their players back in the weeks to come and can improve, we’ll be the depleted side soon and things are unlikely to get better for us.
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