Summary – Draw. Points dropped. Couldn’t even score. On a weekend when the Manchester clubs play the North London clubs, the last thing you want to do is to drop points and we did just that. As pundits say whether it’s a point won or two points lost will be known on Sunday. Well, if you’re looking to win the title, any draw is points lost. Since we have lowered our sights to the likes for Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool, we could even draw a positive out of a draw with Norwich. Even if we see Manchester beating North London on Sunday, it still means we missed out on an opportunity to extend the gap.

This game also had a unique record of no fouls committed by either teams in the whole of first half. Not even one foul. That’s like FIFA 12. While this can be seen as a positive thing by some, I’d rather have some fouls committed by Chelsea and play in a way that would have the opposition commit some fouls. The way I see it, fouls are a result of an intent. If you make a number of successful tackles and commit no fouls, that I’m happy about. Lack of intent towards closing down and tackles can also result in fewer number of fouls. What’s special about this first half is that there were a number of successful tackles but either teams and still there were no fouls. Good show.

What went wrong? Same old probing with half decent efforts and bad finishing. Can’t help but think we should be creating lot more chances than we are managing to do now. We started with a 4-3-3 with Sturridge and Mata on either sides of Torres. I’m still of the opinion that we should play 4-2-3-1 and keep Sturridge on the bench and bring him on in the second half. 4-2-3-1 will allow Mata to move to the centre and have more of the ball. I know Sturridge deserves to start but he does tilt the balance of the starting eleven and hence we don’t get the best out of our starting eleven. Click Here To Read The Full Article

We still have a 100% win record in 2012. How cool is that? Three wins in three matches – Wolves, Portsmouth and now Sunderland – two of them in premier league. In just this short period, we saw teams like Spurs, Liverpool, Man City drop points. Only when we keep winning, we see how beatable other teams are and how often they could drop points. This month is a good one for us. Luckily, we have been blessed with some winnable match-ups. But that doesn’t mean we are winning any of this as easily as we should.

It’s only fair to say that we’ve been . . . lucky! Yup, luck had deserted us for a few months. In exactly those months, we chose to defend in methods unfamiliar and the result was a nervous hovering in the fourth spot. Looks like we have made some tweaks in our defending methods as we are dropping slightly deeper with the fullbacks not operating as full time wingers. And now, luck seems to be back. All these three wins this month could have ended in draws and we wouldn’t have been able to complain (yes, including the ‘massive’ 4-0 win).

See I’m quite convinced that 4-2-3-1 is the way to go. Let’s admit this – we don’t have one orthodox winger in our whole squad, not even one. And we should get Mata to get involved more and for that he should be playing in the middle behind Torres. This is one reason why I’m not quite missing Sturridge. With Sturridge in the team, we are forced to play a two striker formation or three-man forward, considering that Torres should start every match. So actually I’m quite pleased that Sturridge didn’t start

It’s no surprise that the goal was created by Mata and Torres – two of our four best players in recent times (Ramires & Sturridge being the other two). No one in Chelsea delivers dangerous crosses like Mata and crossing is not supposed to be Mata’s strong point. You’ll be surprised to know the proportion of Chelsea opportunities are created by Torres. We’d love to see him at the end of these opportunities and taking advantage of them but at least he’s been the creator for many of them.

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