That’s it! Job done!
Finally, Jose’s heard us. He started off with 4-3-3 today but surprisingly with Kalou in the centre. Both Drogba and Sheva were on the bench. Actually speaking, both Sheva and Drogba are not on the scoresheets for quite a few matches. May be Jose thought, playing Newcastle at home, is the right time to give some chance to Kalou. It was great to see Robben and SWP starting.
Ok, there was 4-3-3 and there were pacy wingers. But still the we did really struggle in the first half. We were losing possession and did not create too many clear chances. Kalou once again showed how skilled he is. Jose was running out of patience with SWP and he was subbed in the halftime. Essien was once again the fulcrum of the team and was brilliant defensively. It looked as though Essien was not quite joining in the attacks today was in the defensive midfield and defence. Essien, in my opinion, is easily the best player of this season, so far. When Maka came in for Carvalho, Essien added one more feather in his cap by playing in central defence. Going by the last few matches, Essien is giving a run for Geremi/Paulo for the right back position. Now, Carvalho, better watch out.
With 25 more minutes to go, Jose brought on Sheva and Drogba. Sheva played well today and once again is it just me or he plays well whenever he plays little deeper. In this season whenever he has played little deeper, he has really done well by holding up or by providing crucial and accurate passes. May be he play well as a second striker in a 4-4-1-1. Only when he plays deeper, he gets fraction more time on the ball which he badly needs in this new league. When the possibility of a nil-nil draw was looming large, Sheva mis-hit a smart pass from Robben, only to find Drogba who proves to be the best ‘fox in the box’.
Bad luck is chasing Robben, who did a lot of running around and made a quite a few crosses. He should have got one for himself but the first goal of this season for him still eludes him. Still I wish to see more of Robben and I somehow get a feeling that Jose will play Robben all 90 minutes from now on, whenever possible. To put it short, he will be added to the list of untouchables, may be at the expense of Ballack. Hilario has started to look more shaky and we are not scoring enough goals to make good any mistakes he might make.
I dont see Jose playing 4-3-3 anymore looking at our first half performance. I’m sure he’ll go back to 4-4-2 with both Sheva and Drogba. May be, he will drop Ballack for Makelele in the matches to come. Ballack has not been adding too much value and he currently looks very dispensable. I dont expect to see SWP for sometime, unless we are 2-0 up after 70 mins or something.
Jose said:
Didier Drogba’s attitude was brilliant. He was injured and there was maybe the risk of a bigger injury if he played, but at a tough time we needed him and he came on and made his contribution with the goal. The team understood the message at half-time and the message was that we couldn’t afford to lose points from this game. Sometimes you get points through quality and sometimes you get it with your heart, and we did it with our heart.
The worrying fact is we have made heavy weather of this cakewalk. With our quality of players, we should have beaten this Newcastle team by some margin and match should have been over by the first half. Unfortunate thing is there is a pattern you can see. We have messed up too many matches this season, though in most of them, we ended up winning. If Man Utd plays Newcastle like we played them today, I’m sure we’ll lead the table by March and go on winning in April. But Man Utd are just finishing off smaller opponents and even midtablers with some brute force.
While a team like ours should suffer from complacency, the problem is quite the opposite. With the players of high calibre, we should not play these teams like playing European champions away. We should put pressure on these teams early on, try to settle the match in the first 30 minutes itself. Whereas, in the first half today, I was just wondering where our goal will come from.
I hope Jose will kick some butts despite this win. We have few more crucial matches this month before the transfer market opens. Not that the team lacks in any department, but if SWP or Diarra is to leave, we might have to fill in those positions.
The next match is Everton away. Not an easy match but I would like to see some reaction from the players and win by a 2-goal margin.
[tags] Chelsea, Newcastle United, Drogba, Jose Mourinho, Glenn Roeder, Shevchenko, Essien, Ballack [/tags]
Fan from Istanbul again,
I wanna think that the last game can be a lesson for “The Special One” as to which formation and whom he should play if he still wants to win the Premiership and even more Champions League.
Till now I have always insisted that Sheva should play along with Drogba and the last match proved me right. Whether Sheva scuffed or passed the ball it was his very existence which helped Drogba to score that vital goal. And I believe that Drogba feels himself comfortably well when he knows that Sheva is not far away from him. Also defenders cannot focus on either of them when there are two of them. But my main point is that Jose should always play the Robben-Sheva-Drogba trio at all costs. Yesterday Sheva got from Robben one of those smart passes he misses so much from his Milano days. Besides I still hope that Sheva is in transition period and will get better.
Another point I want to mention is that the teams’ formation should be 4-4-2 either with Essien and Makelele both, or with Essien and Kalou. Jose should play only Lampard or Ballack or play them interchangebly. First 4-4-2 is as follows:
Hilario
Geremy Carvalho Terry A.Cole
Makelele
Essien Robben
Lampard
Drogba Shevchenko
The second 4-4-2 is as follows:
Hilario
Geremy Carvalho Terry A.Cole
Essien
Kalou Robben
Lampard
Drogba Shevchenko
If Jose is a strong personality then he shouldn’t have untouchables in his team. I’m sure that the formations above are better than what Jose offers week in and week out. There is no sense in playing both Lamps and Ballack together. Robben and Kalou cannot be wasted as they both offer more width and attacking options from both wings.
If I were at Jose’s place I would at least try those formations.
Good-luck to Chelsea!
I think we should now stop being unrealistic and chauvinistic. Chelsea, at present, is playing football nowhere near ManU or even Arsenal. We are able to manage just scrappy 1- 0 wins against teams as depleted as Newcastle. ManU defeated Bolton 4-0 and we were happy to defend and defend after scoring one goal.This attitude will get us nowhere and I don’t see CL or even league coming to Stamford this season(will be happiest man if proven wrong). Points gap is continuously increasing and still we are persiting with same set of players who time and again have proved to be non-performing. For me, Ballack is as good as nothing.He is slow for EPL and I still have to see his mid-field crativity.Infact, he seems to be breaking flow of Chelsea attacks. No doubt Sheva is working very hard but he hasn’t set into team schemes
and hence seems to be out of play everytime.Most importantly, now Jose is also under lots of pressure as is evident from his comments. Lets see how he copes with it.
Above post is from me….
From Istanbul
You are right Manish. That’s my point too. Ballack shouldn’t start. But Sheva should. Sheva at least is trying hard and doing something. Sheva plays better with Robben but whenever Robben is introduced Sheva is dropped. That’s ridiculous. I’m starting to lose faith in Jose.
reason why jose persists with ballack is, if he cannot make ballack fit into the team now, he cannot play for the enitre league then. come february, every draw and defeat will mean much more than they are now. so, having brought in ballack with his reputation, if ballack is not played now, it is a failure on jose’s part.
may be jose might have high tolerance levels for ballack and i have a feeling that he would continue to play till end of december after which, if he doesnt come up with good performances, jose might lose patience.
as regards sheva, we should play him, whether he scores or not. he is a very good contributor.
Roman here
I see the points u all are making but another thing I want to add is that all the other teams big and small have learnt to play us . They are following Barca’s lead or game plan ( even Reading ) which is attack CFC as much as possible , lob the ball over lamps, ballack and makelele and go staright for goal .Their attack becomes their defence when we got no swift counterattacks.
And also they are conentrating much more on foiling our set pieces so the goal haul the those plays has been dropping.
So the above formations u guys wrote about, would remedy.a lot of what’s wrong.
As I said before if it were not for the quality of the rest of the team we would be lots of points adrift
SWP is a problem too, he’s gat to have more guile.
Ballack if he plays again soon ,has got to smack a lot more crackerjack 30-yd smashers into goals like he used to do at Bayern.If the goalies push/punch them out sheva and Drogba can pounce.
That’s a lot off my chest .
Hope the best for Sunday’s game
My point is with so much talent with us if we still rely on set pieces to score then it raises fingers on manager more or less.
I think where we lack is swift and accurate passing in midefield and then in or near opponent’s penalty box. Thats where ManU or Arsenal has been excellent.Arsenal’s goal aginst us was a result of such builtup only.Their built up near penalty box is too good whereas we try to penetrate by brute force and on failing to do so we resort to long range shots.And thats the reason for Sheva’s underperformance too,I think. And what stop us from this sort of play are players like Ballack and to some extent Lampard too. Both of these are too laggard to contribute to swift built up. Players like Robben are needed for it. But I think we don’t have too many such players.
Guys,
We won with this formation against Barca and Draw with them at Camp Nou(scored 2 goals isn’t it Great).Last year and before that we were never able to do that at least in camp nou.in first season we won 4-2 at SM(but narrowly qualified, ).Last year also we have not even created any oppurtunity at Camp Nou,to win the match.This year we might have won match if Robben put the ball in empty net at Camp Nou.
I know we are not flashy like prev years.I think only issue was last year JM had resources which could change the game after 1-2 subs.Like Crespo did so many times,then Duff,Joe Cole,GidJ.
But this year we donot have that quality sitting on bench,Wehave seen Kalou,SWP are not able to score goals when our main strikers fails.
Opposition manager will form team wrt our 1st formation and if it does not score goal till half time then Jose has shuffle ,But the player which are on bench not able to deliver.
Kalou,SWP has not able to score goals in almost emtpy nets not even once(Even offside,becos of this only we Draw with aston Vila(Middleborogh was sheer luck).
And Drogba is scoring Goal,only becuase Sheva is there.In the last 3 Years Drogba was not able to score,(Donot say becoz of lone striker,Crespo has scored more).
Drogba has missed clear cut chances against Arsenal this year too,3-4 clear Headers and he not even forced the GoalKeeper to make Save.
Our Drogba is only old DD (except few flashes).
Ballack delivered when matters against Bolton,and I appreciate what he is doing in Midfield controlling ball and Man.
Last year at SM,barca scored 2nd goal only because SWP not able make a simple foul when Ronnie collected the ball from his own half and ran 40 yard before delivering cross, if Ballack was there we could not have lost.
Man u is playing greate,becuase of Ronaldo is fast and Giigs also doing good also.But I have no worry I think if till January end we have managed to stay till 5 points difference then we will have good chance to win the PL and best of Luck for CL
The problem is that CFC do not offer any width and yes i agree that Sheva and Drog are a great partnership but the diamond midfield is not working!!!!
The problem becomes huge because not having wingers means that the other teams can double attack our fullbacks with no cover in front they fail to stop the attack and we concede stupid goals , as it is we r weak on the Right side!!!!
The solution is to play wingers to give the width,crosses and trickery as well as help the fullbacks in counterattacks, i am not concerned by the Left side where Cole and Robben can do the work as good as anyone but the Right is very weak as Philips is not good enough for CFC!!!!
no ballack needed and rest Maka every alternate match , we would have to cope with things as they r on the right till Joe comes back!!!
We have to have pacy wingers otherwise oppositions will keep on stuffling us in middle. Robben must start every game and he showed it why against Arsenal.
We all are thinking that ManU will face injuries but same is true for us too. And if it happens to someone like Essien or Makelele it will be very tough for us. Essien has played every single moment this season and I think he needs to be given some well deserved rest.
It’s Porto guys for the CL
Roman
Why does giggs want hargreaves at ManUre ? What is the real reason besides he’s a great palyer and has family in B and we would be really strong with him ?
Anyone to enlighten me ?
The real reason is Fergie who wants a def mid cuz carrick is not working whereas Hargreaves will add steel to the mid which Manu lack , given Hargreaves experience both at the bundesliga and International will really benefit Manu and Fergie knows this!!
As for Giggs he is just voicing his managers opinion and trying to persuade Bayern to sell Harg to thembut i see no reason why Bayern should get rid of him but the persistency will pay off i rather hope not!!!!!
That was me with last post.
And Maybe just maybe , ManUre drawing Lille is good for us too coz they get to go up to the CL ,QFinals at least ,like us coz the Americano Glazers I think would choose the EPL title over the CL. . And their fans are already talking like they won it. The bloody cheek.
I live in a place where 90% of all football fans are ManUrey fans .
I have seen and I can understand the frustration
they been thru for so many years but so soon?
Heck they are so so sure of it .
I hope to see that their premature hopes are misplaced.
And read “They” for “we” in the last post .
Makes me want to puke that I inadvertently typed that . Was reading the BBC sports in a window at the same time I typed it .sorry everyone .
Roman
No I am not obsessed with Manurey either . It’s just that there’s not much about CFC to read about lately.
I have just registered to this site
This is a CFC fan from Istanbul.
If Jose is trying to accomodate Ballack to the system then I don’t understand it. If that is the case then there are 2 questions to be answered by Jose. The 1st one: Even if Ballack gets fit what will give this to the team? Ballack is neither Kaka (no dribbling and creativity) nor Shweinsteiger (no pace and regular shots). He is too similar with Lamps. Suiting him to the system gives more minuses rather than pluses. Because of Ballack Lamps cannot do his work properly, doesn’t feel himself comfortable. So because of introducing one new man we are cutting efficiency of another. The only plus is Ballack’s height. The 2nd question is: Even if Ballack gets fit and starts to contribute lately will it not be too late as the gap between us and ManUre is increasing? So, the cost is too big.
To continue, because of Ballack’s presence and absence of Robben-like players Sheva is inefficient too.
But if Jose likes Ballack so much that he cannot drop him then he should drop Lampard. Yet Lampard is “untouchable”.
So, as you see regardless of from which angle you look at the problem Ballack’s presence is the BIG MINUS for Chelsea.
As for SWP, I’m agree with the one who said that he is good enough for CFC.
If Jose doesn’t solve this problem sooner rather than later then we all can forget this year’s Premiership. I just can’t see ManUtd losing any points outside of Emirates, Anfield and Stamford Bridge. But CFC will go to Emirates and Anfield as well. In these circumstances 5 points are a big gap.
You can criticize me for being too pessimistic but that’s reality.
Good-luck to Chelsea!
Sorry, I meant SWP is not good enough for CFC.
Chelsea is our darling team.Our players should make more commitment in our quest to win this years premiership trophy.
…Iyke