mourinho_martinoneill.jpg

Good luck mate!

Chelsea’s performance today: [rating:3.75/5]
Our best game of the season so far, is unfortunately a draw at home. On our day, this might have been a goalfest. Chelsea had 19 shots and 10 of them on target. Not always the better team wins and we all know this is football. Geremi started as Right Back and Ashley on the left. Jose must have resisted the temptation of playing Obi and he played both Maka and Essien. And that was a decision he would not have regretted. In my opinion, everybody played well and really well except SWP who did very poorly with the most fresh pair of legs in the pitch.

Drogba did not score the goal rather he had a touch on the ball that resulted in a goal. Anyway, let’s give him some credit for being in the right place to have that touch on the ball and also for being the only Chelsea player on the pitch with some luck. Having gone one up as early as the third minute, Chelsea was on song attacking beautifully. But once again the ‘stoppage time syndrome’ hit Chelsea to make a blunder to leave Ridgewell unmarked and unmanned for a 3-metre radius whose headed cross was smartly headed by Agbonlahor.

Robben was very impressive with a couple of piercing runs, Lampard threatened the VIlla goal time and again with his full blooded shoots, Essien had lots of shots on target and Sheva did his bit by controlling the ball in the midfield and also supplying to the box and he sent one powerful shot to the top right of the goal which was superbly saved by Sorensen.

Ashely Cole had a decent match and had made some decent tackles. Special mention is required for Makalele’s smart tackle on Angel in the dying minutes of the game. Well, that went unpunished by the referee. Maka did just enough to ensure that Angel loses the ball in the one-on-one situation and in the process he did what appreared to me as a foul but certainly not a yellow card. That was just top class defending by Makelele.

In the second half, only one team played football and it was some brilliant creative football by Chelsea. It looked like the clincher might arrive any moment and this situation remained till the final whistle. Like Jose said Martin O’Neill must have been praying for the match to finish. Kalou was brought in for Geremi and Wright Phillips for Robben. Kalou was once again impressive and I would love to see more of him.

SWP truly made a mess of his chances of making an impression. If he plays couple more matches, he might be shown the door, come January. There was one chance where he could have passed to Sheva who was straight in front of the goal begging for the ball. SWP preferred to take things on his own and hit the bar from a difficult angle. Even if he had scored from that shot I would still have not agreed to this idea, when Sheva would have just slotted it home with ease. And there was this chance where he just missed a sitter with his right foot whereas a simple left footer would have won the match. He has work a lot to improve on his reliability factor.

Jose Mourinho in the post match conference:

The result is not fair. One team tried to win, the other tried to get a draw. I think it was our best game of the season. We produced incredible football and I think 10 great chances. I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had scored a winner at the end. It just wasn’t our day.

When you play well and don’t get results, you are not frustrated – you just accept it. But when you play so well like we did and produce a game of high quality with so many chances to win the game, everybody knows you deserve to win. I think the production of football is important as well as philosophy of both teams.

In this game, one team wanted to win and the other one wanted a point. I don’t blame Villa. They came here to play their game and when they went one down, they had a reaction. In the second half, I don’t think they could have done any more. They could not stop us. Their goalkeeper saved well. He made two or three very good saves but the post also did very well for them. But I don’t want to focus on the strikers because everybody in my team had a chance to score a goal. The team played well but could not score enough goals to win.

It was one of those games when I was praying for the ball to hit the net and Martin O’Neill was praying for the match to finish. We shared some nice words at the end. He’s a good guy and a motivator. His team fights a lot. Sometimes people like him and players like that deserve a little bit of luck.

Martin O’Neill

I enjoyed it. We got off to a very poor start and looked more than a bit apprehensive. But we got more positive and deserved to be level at half-time. We came under severe pressure in the second half, but we were a threat to them. There’s a bit more confidence in the side now and on another day we could have caved in. We showed resilience. It would have been very harsh on Chelsea had we won.

I just loved the way we played. If we continue playing this way, this kind of football would send shivers in the spine of our rivals. It was a shame that we had to draw. But still, I’m happy for the brilliant game and superb team performance by Chelsea.

Elsewhere Liverpool surprisingly lost to Bolton and Arsenal survived a scare with Charlton missing chances till the last minute. They were powered by a double strike by van Persie, the second goal being one of the best goals of the season so far. Henry played well but missed a complete sitter in the most embarassing fashion. His situation is similar to that of Sheva now.

Anyway, we continue to remain on top but the gap is narrowing. No club football for the next two weeks as we break for International duties. When we return, we travel away to play Reading on 14th Oct and then on the 18th Oct, the mouth-watering clash of the titans.

Rate this post – [ratings]