CHELSEA 2-1 Fulham: Two Minute Turnaround Gets The Win

Posted on December 29th, 2009 by Chelsea D

Well, it was a close call and a long time coming but we finally got ourselves 3 points.

Ancelotti made a few changes to the side that scraped a draw against Birmingham Saturday, notably, bringing in Yuri Zhirkov and dropping Ashley Cole, and replacing Ivanovic with Ferreira and, watched by Jose Mourinho, we set about making life difficult for ourselves. Well, it’s not exactly making it easy for yourself going a goal down inside five minutes is it? But that’s what we managed to do.

The usual sloppy defending saw Zoltan Gera take advantage just over 4 minutes in and for long periods, it didn’t look as if we had any idea how to respond. Fortunately the crowd were on hand to cheer the lads on. Oh no wait, that should be ‘jeer’.  Honestly, what a bloody disgrace. None of us are happy with our current form and results but what a bloody joke, booing your own players.

Yes, we were struggling to find a way through the Fulham defence but a goal down or not, we were all over them. Seriously, is it any wonder the players started to lack faith in themselves when they’re top of the table and being booed before half-time? It’s not the first bloody time we’ve been a goal down and it won’t be the last – get a grip.

Anyway, second half and with the exception Carvalho doing his best to gift Fulham a second with a nightmare backpass, we were still battering them. Ancelotti’s sense returned, seeing him replace Ferreira  for Ivanovic just before switching Mikel for Sturridge. And it was the substitions that gave us the breakthrough, first with Ivanovic, whose crossing is head and shoulders better than anything Ferreira managed to pull off, with a cross that Didier Drogba happily banged in. Just minutes later, two minutes in fact, Sturridge sort of cross, sort of shot, came off Chris Smalling’s knee and we had enough luck for it to go in. 

Overall, whilst at times we seemed to lose our way a bit and certainly missed the ability to be clinical, we definitely did enough to warrant the 2-1 but with Drogba, Essien, Kalou and Mikel all missing now, we’ll be needing a lot more than luck in our next few games.

 

TEAMS

CHELSEA: Cech, Ferreira (Ivanovic, 63), Terry, Carvalho, Zhirkov (A Cole, 83), Mikel (Sturridge, 69), Lampard, Ballack, J Cole, Drogba, Kalou.

Unused subs: Hilario, Alex, Belletti, Kakuta

FULHAM: Schwarzer, Pantsil (Etuhu, 63), Hughes, Smalling, Konchesky, Duff (Riise, 84), Murphy, Baird, Gera (A Johnson, 70),  Zamora, Dempsey.

Unused subs: Zuberbuhler, Nevland, Greening, Kallio

 

GOALS

CHELSEA: Drogba 71, Smalling og, 73

FULHAM: Gera 4

Filed under: Match report, Rants

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2 Responses to “CHELSEA 2-1 Fulham: Two Minute Turnaround Gets The Win”

  1. rob, on December 29th, 2009 at 14:42 Said:

    we were just plain lucky. there is nothing worth shouting about given such a poor run of only 2 wins in eight games. carlo should shake off his ego and re-assess his failed diamond n failed old guns. i dont think we will be champions under carlo because he’s not THE type of tactician that will bring us trophies. but he’s the only one we can ask for at the moment. where was the pace n creativity? the diamond clearly hv failed. it was the eighth game that i screamt at the tivo to take out ballack, paolo, yuri and lampard. they looked clumsy and out of ideas at walking pace. i wonder when would the time to finally see kakuta, matic n strridge finish a game together? chelsea is a pain to watch now.

  2. Sammie, on December 31st, 2009 at 11:45 Said:

    To be candid, I really don’t understand what Carlo is trying to do. It was glaring that the absence of two players affected the team, Anelka & Essien. There was no creativity from any of the players. Why is kakuta not playing, once, the african players leave, what happens then. He needs to go back 2 d drawing board.