bocanegra_fulham.jpg

They deserved a point and a pic in this post than us!


I’m gutted. I’m really gutted. We’re back on a 6 point gap. Another 2-2 draw at home and I dont know what else to expect in the matches to come. I thought of watching the late night delayed broadcast of this match. Now, I’ve changed my mind.

Moriz Volz got the much-awaited 15,000th goal of the Premiership. So, Barclays would let Volz spend 15,000 pounds on a charity of his choice. Whereas our contribution to chartity did not stop there. I happened to see the video Fulham’s equaliser with just above 5 minutes to go. One man’s failed clearance cost us the goal, yes, Michael ‘untouchable’ Ballack. Of course, he can share the blame with the defenders too. This goal sums up our defensive performance of the last three weeks or so.

Fulham’s first goal:

Fulham’s second goal

Jose is equally gutted:

I must credit Fulham and the way they reacted. They know we can’t defend so they attacked, it’s that simple. The story is the same for us. When teams keep seeing us making mistakes they believe they can score goals. At the moment we are always in danger. We’ve conceded two goals four times in-a-row and it doesn’t surprise me.

If everybody knows that Chelsea at this moment cannot defend, I am the first one to know that. When the opponent sees one mistake, and another mistake, and another mistake, they smell the chance and they keep going until the end. This is exactly the opposite of previous periods. Before they know they cannot score and they don’t have the belief so it’s easy for us to control matches.

The first 15 minutes, we had five chances to score, some with an open goal, and we didn’t score. They had nothing but with the first chance scored. Against Wigan and Everton, we won in the last minute and the opponent had no chance to recover. But when they have 15 or 20 minutes, we cannot hold them. In this country everybody has tall and strong strikers, they put the ball in the box, and you need to have very strong central defenders.

At the moment, we don’t dominate the game in the air. I think if you play with this defence in another championship or even in the Champions League, it is not a big deal. We cannot defend, we are conceding incredible goals and in attack we have one player performing and scoring goals. All the others are not doing enough – Sheva is not performing, Shaun is not performing, Kalou is not performing.

Paulo is not a central defender, he does what he can do. Hilario is our third goalkeeper, he plays to the maximum he can. Ricardo is the only central defender. He’s played the last ten consecutive matches, he’s been injured for the last couple of months and is doing the maximum he can because he knows he is the only one we have to play there. If the club asks for my opinion, I would say yes. But, at the same time, when I see the eyes of some clubs open wide and they go for absolutely incredible money for very ordinary players, I would say no. For a normal player, you cannot pay a fortune.

If it is like that, then we go with the players we have. I need the best goalkeeper in the world back. I need the best central defender in the world back. I don’t need millions.

Sounds like he’s gonna shoot down a couple of players if he sees us drawing or losing again. As I always say, the good thing about Jose is that he feels like a normal fan and expresses our feelings. He does not bullshit like Arsene Whinger does everytime his Arsenil team loses or draws trying to walk the ball into the net. Jose’s words are very clear. He thinks, with the current set of players in defence (GK included), he considers conceding goals is a norm and he wants the forwards to score enough to compensate the conceded goals.

I really really hope that he drops Ballack and starts playing 4-3-3. We dont have the luxury of experimenting anymore. And he should make some killer moves this January. I hope he buys a quality goalkeeper, very strong and sound centre back and right back. Like I said before, if we stop leaking these ‘defensive-error’ goals, we will be on song again.

We have been defending poorly. Also we have been unfortunate with crucial injuries which are difficult to replace or unable to replace. But what’s bothering me is that we have not been able to manage this situation with the given set of players. May be, Jose’s stubbornness with Ballack is costing us. Sometimes managers do this. They’ll take some decisions that will absolutely beat us all, but they might have their own reasons and if they’re lucky that will be vindicated.

Let me make it very clear. I’m sure that we will win the title. I’m sure we’ll improve and hand over our mediocrity baton to Man Utd. The next few months will be twice tougher in maintaining performance amidst injuries, fatigues, cup results etc.

If at all there is one positive in the match, that is Didier Drogba. This is surely Drogba’s season. No one’s going to take this away from him. We have already seen John Terry as a goal keeper this season. May be we’ll see Drogba as the centre back sometime in January. And Arsenil have lost to Sheffield. Atleast they have not closed up the gap between them and us.

One more match left in the holiday season fixtures. We go to Villa park. I would normally call this a 3-pointer, but looking at today’s match, we should do a lot better at the Villa park.

[tags] Chelsea, Fulham, Derby, Drogba, Volz, 15000 goals, Villa, Ballack, Jose Mourinho [/tags]