Not the best possible result but not the worst either. If draw is a bad result at a home leg, a score draw is even worse. But talking about the chances of proceeding to the semi finals, it’s all even. With the kind of home record we have, if Valencia can hold Chelsea, then we can beat them at the Estadio Mestalla. Anyway, it is also obvious that we certainly have to score, to have any chances of proceeding to the semi finals.

Roma beat Man Utd 2-1 in a match that convinced more that Man Utd is slipping away. Even with 11 men, Roma were all over Man Utd and they must have won with a bigger margin. Anything can happen in Old Trafford. I’d put my money on Roma.

Back to our match, Valencia played okay for a good team playing in a Champions League quarterfinals. Except that magical moment from Silva, I was not too impressed by Valencia tonight. If this is what we can expect from them and if they are going to play like this next week, I’ll be relieved. We played a lot better than Valencia. We passed the ball around nicely, made some good set-ups and also created several smart chances. May be we needed some more sharpness in front of the goal.

We were also unlucky for not having Ayala sent off for his blatant elbow on Sheva. Not only it was a red cardable foul but also it denied us a goal scoring opportunity. This incident happened in the 10th minute. If Ayala was red carded and if they had play for 80 minutes with just 10 men, it would have been game over for Valencia. While we didnt have the luck with Ayala’s red card, atleast we should have had some luck with Kalou’s shot that followed this incident. There may not be too many matches this season, where we did not hit the bar!

Our wing backs had a great match. Diarra, as always, was constantly in action. His brilliant ball retention skills and smooth dribbling were quite his hallmark today. Cole made some very accurate and threatening crosses and he also made some crucial hard tackles that made Valencia attack look impotent. As I had mentioned in an earlier post, Ashley Cole has been forming a superb partnership with Drogba. The way he finds Drogba from anywhere on the pitch is very exciting to see and look for. Drogba scored his 30th goal of the season which is quite a feat and if he gets a hattrick somewhere along, he can aspire for 40. He’s not just scoring goals, he’s scoring very very important goals for Chelsea. Did I say anything about Valencia’s tendency to concede in the 45 – 60 minute period?

Ballack remains a mystery. His form intially was very poor and then it improved and it has remained unpredictably volatile. After a very ordinary match against Watford, he has given a roaring performance tonight. Whenever he improves his workrate, he plays really well. Well, this being a champions league match, we expected him to play well but he has has played quite a few with Chelsea too but tonight was one of his better matches. If there was one player who didnt have particulary good match it was Frank Lampard. He was not in his spirits – bad free kicks, poor corners, losing possession – his game was uninspiring this match.

It was great to see Joe Cole back on the pitch. He needs some more match practice, before he starts truobling the defences again. I just hope Joe Cole and Essien would be able play all 90 minutes in Estadio Mestalla.

[video]http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/2qDiKi5sFPGPdbuuW[/video]

John Terry insists that confidence and fighting spirit will see us through:

We scored a great goal and the fighting spirit was just what we needed. We have shown in the Champions League we can go away and go through. We need to be on our game and full of confidence and take the game to them. With Didier scoring goals we are sure we can score a few goals. We just need to keep a clean sheet.

Drogba feels that the goal gave us the belief that we can qualify:

It was difficult. They were playing well but we didn’t panic. We knew we were going to have one chance. The most important thing is not my goal to score, to come back into the game and we believe we can qualify there.

Jose was very pragmatic in his view about Chelsea’s situation now in the Champions league:

It is open. Normally a team that plays at home considers a victory a good result and a draw a bad result but with a draw everything is open and we can go to Valencia and reach the semi-finals.

I believe they believe they are in a better position now because they are at home (in the second leg) but why not win in Valencia or get a draw and go into extra time? We need to play well. We know the atmosphere we will get there so we need a good referee too. This result still gives us one more week to believe we can progress in the Champions League.

All to play for, is what Jose says and I agree with him. All it takes is a first goal by Chelsea and you’ll see the whole complexion of the game changing. Is this going to be like the FA Cup quarterfinal against the Spurs where we drew at home and won at White Hart Lane?

{democracy:27}