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CHELSEA 2-3 City: Red Gives Us The Blues

CHELSEA 2-3 CITY

Oh well, yesterday wrapped up a pre-season we’ll have no trouble forgetting eh?

I’d already said I was probably more excited about the Olympics finally coming to an end than the Community Shield anyway – and the game itself did nothing to change that. I didn’t expect us to play a la Barcelona after some of the pre-season we’ve seen and to be fair, we weren’t completely dire, but we’re not as sorted as I’d like to see us.

I usually feel Mikel gets stick unnecessarily but on this occasion, wanted shooting or at the very least, taking out the back for a proper bitch slap. He just wasn’t at the races. In fact, if this had been an Olympic event, he’d still be on his starting block. Luiz is another one who gets stick off the back of a few bad performances but again, some of his errors yesterday made defending him like arguing Joey Barton is submissive.

Not that we couldn’t have got a result out of the game because Torres was certainly on the prowl and five minutes before the break, with some really inspiring football from Ramires, Torres ended the move with the goal it deserved.  Not that we had time to get carried away with being a goal up though because we were a man down just a bloody quick. It would seem that whilst Kevin Friend thinks elbows to the face are permissible in charity games, slightly clumsy looking sliding tackles aren’t. Worthy of a 3 match ban? Do me a favour – but that’s what Branislav Ivanovic will get thanks to the sort of inconsistent reffing we’re far too used to. A little irritated by that? Yes, because if he’d been applying the same level of decision making for all challenges, City would have been down to ten and Ivanovic might have been less inclined to dive in with that sort of gusto.

Anyway rubbish reffing aside, City, who by the way had no intention of playing this as a friendly, did exactly what you’d expect a Premier League championship winning side to do against ten men – they made the extra man count – quickly! Right after Kompany body-checked Torres of course.

John Terry in benevolent mood, cleared right to the feet of Yaya Toure, who dispatched his gift past Petr Cech. Six minutes later, Carlos Tevez – who’d generously bestowed the City support with his presence in the side rather than the golf course – demonstrated what leaving the pies alone for the summer adds to his game. And then to add insult to the injury of the red card, our makeshift right back in Ramires was left virtually statuesque by Nasri to leave us 3-1 down.

At this point, I was expecting a pretty painful result but thankfully it didn’t come to that. The introduction of Sturridge and Bertrand freshened us up and it was the linking between these two that led to our second goal, with Sturridge’s shot spilled by Pantilimon and Bertrand having the energy and enthusiasm – sadly lacking in some of his team-mates – to slot home. It wasn’t going to get any better than that though, even with Petr Cech joining in up front late on and we finished up on the same scoreline City lost to United by last season.

Overall then, a win might have been nice after a pretty uninspiring pre-season but shit happens. Let’s get the season underway proper before we reach for the razor blades eh?

TEAMS

CHELSEA: Cech, Ivanovic, Terry, Luiz, Cole, Mikel, Lampard, Ramires, Mata, Hazard, Torres.

Subs: Turnbull, Merieles, Bertrand, Cahill, Sturridge, Piazon.

CITY: Pantilimon, Zabelata, Kompany, Savic,  Kolorov, Milner, Di Jong, Yaya Toure, Nasri, Aguero, Tevez

Subs: Johansen, Clichy, Kolo Toure, Silva, Johnson, Razak, Dzeko

 

Ref: Kevin Friend

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