Another late goal and another final. I was keen to see the reactions of two people in the Old Trafford stands – Alex Ferguson and Roman Abramovich. While I couldnt see Fergie’s reaction, I did see that Roman was absolutely enjoying our win. All those talks about Roman absenting himself from the Valencia match at Mestalla will now quiet down as he was here to watch Chelsea proceed to their second final of the season. In the media, Jose still sounds that he has a hint from the top about his removal. Once again he says that the people at the top in Chelsea should speak up and end all this speculation.

Jose chose a team which I wasn’t too happy about. May be, there were two crucial errors in the team selection which made this a much more difficult match for us. One is Maka starting and playing for about minutes. For all that he is capable of, he was not as effective as I’d want a defensive midfielder to be. Not only he lost possession but also in some key areas. He did not appear to intercept and abort the opposition attacks. I should say, unfortunately, he was our weakest link in this match. The second one was Essien starting as the right back. Essien should definitely play as much as he can but let’s relieve him from the purely defensive roles. I can understand if he plays as a stop gap defender but when Diarra was available, Essien should have played as the holding midfielder. Time and again, Essien’s positional errors in the backline caused us too much problems and also gave them too much confidence and strength to come forward.

Earlier, my customary pre-match Winning Eleven game on Xbox against Blackburn was quite reassuring. Believe me, it had some striking similarities with the real match. Drogba scored in the 21st minute and Jason Roberts equalised in the 62nd minute. This match also went to the extra time when Lampard cleaned it off in the 93rd minute.

Typically, we were not in it for the first 10 minutes. As we settled down nicely I could see a goal coming along. The huge difference that the presence of Joe Cole and Essien makes is that it adds quite a bit a creativity and strength to our attacks. Drogba showed how well he was reading the game, when he refused to go down and holding the ball until he played it to oncoming Ballack. Big Boy Ballack made a simple but effective throughball to Lampard, who was once again, in the right place and at the right time. The way Lampard touched the ball, beat the defender, positioned himself and finished neatly was awesome. Frank seems to be a real striker material and no wonder he has now 21 goals in this season while Fibreglass scored only his first goal of the season on Saturday.

Lampard Goal

[video]http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/5WPyY9EY4b52tc8GW[/video]

All through the first half, it looked like another match of Chelsea domination without the scoreline really reflecting that. if I say that the second half started brightly, it would be partially true. Around the 48th minute, Drogba selflessly passed to Sheva right in front of the goal, where he himself could have scored. Sheva, so embarrassingly mis-hit a simple tap-in that would have finished off the match. About 15 minutes later, Jose subbed Sheva, which almost looked like he was punishing him for his poor show, while Roman was watching it all from the stands. Later on, I started to realise that this could end being a closer game than most of us thought. For some lengthy periods of time, Blackburn held possession and started to look more and more dangerous. Though the way we conceded was unfortunate, they completely deserved to equalise.

Rovers could not break us down the middle. Attack after attack, they only tried to cross from the flanks. Not surprisingly, most of their crosses came from their right flank as they were determined to test and trouble Essien. At least in the second half, I expected Jose to bring in Diarra. One more positional error by Essien gave a free header to Gamst Pedersen who, unbelievably, missed that sitter. Had it gone in, it would have put us in a very precarious position. Throughout the match, Carvalho was fantastic and truly outshone Terry, who was having a very ordinary match. Once again, Mikel played a gem of a role for the short time he played. I wish he had started and played all of 120 minutes. Despite all this Essien played really well. It’s just that he was at the right back and he couldnt do justice to this role. Whenever he had the ball, Rovers just could not come to terms with his pace. Though he was doubtful in off the ball stiuations, whenever he had the ball, his holding skills and distribution were excellent.

Drogba has been having the season of his life and for all that we have achieved this season so far, we owe a lot to his form. I have been writing in this blog that Drogba now wants to score spectacular goals than just goals. I see that this could even affect his game and form, if this goes beyond a certain limit. There was this 360 degree spin he did for keeping the ball closed on the sidelines and failed to keep it in. That was something he could have held possession without any of those theatrics. I can understand if one does a 360 degree spin to beat a defender that would put him in front of the goal, but not when you could have held possession with a simple touch. I’m sure Jose has been watching his game. Let’s leave this to him.

It was nice to see both teams going for a win and not hoping for the penalties. As we moved on to the extra time and the second half of the ET, though it looked more and more anybody’s match, surely, the last 15 mins of the match belonged to Chelsea. We played with some kind of determination and created more meaningful set-ups and were more creative in attack while Blackburn kept on crossing to the far post. Kalou and SWP were both very dynamic and it was quite natural they were involved in the set -up of the winner. Good little cameo by SWP, who flicked in a low cross to Kalou which was fumbled. Then came in Ballack, positioning himself well and blasting home a left footer. Man, I loved his celebration!

Ballack Goal

[video]http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/2XJmRWCPV0IP4c9f6[/video]

It’s not just his assist and the goal. Ballack put in a quite determined effort all along. He was tough in his tackles, made good passes and did not buckle down in physical play. The free kick he took was a near miss. I was just hoping for the free kick that goes out and curves in to the top corner ala Carlos. We have seen him do that before. Lampard did the job well on again though he was not the fulcrum of our midfield. In a team like ours, where you have so many players that can take resposibilities, you’re going to see one or the other taking the bigger role and delivering the goods. It may not always be Ballack or Lampard or Essien or whoever. They take turns and we are going to be disappointed about those who did not deliver that day to our statisfaction.

Jose after the match:

Michael Ballack has been a top professional since day one. He fights for the team in an unbelievable way and is doing a very good job for us. I thought that Blackburn were amazing. They fought like heroes and all of them – the manager, the crowd, the players – deserve all my respect because they were amazing and gave us a really good game. It is sad because one team has to lose but they must be proud of themselves. My team must be proud also. We are still on for the Quadruple and we must enjoy that. We could win all four, or we could lose the next three, but we live in the moment and are happy.

The real heroes of this match were Carvalho and Cech. Both were brilliant and they were probably the difference between the two sides. I hope Cech produces more such performances in the matches to come in this season.

It is a general question people ask: “If we play like we did today, can we beat Man Utd?”. That’s a very unfair question I’d say, while the answer is No. When we play Man Utd on May 19 at the Wembley, it is another day, another mindset, one of us being league champions, some missing players, possibly different levels of motivation and hunger to win. May 19 looks too far now but anyway, as Jose said he is not on a holiday, we have so many crucial matches coming up. Let’s look at one match at a time. With this kind of performance can we beat West Ham away? Yes we can.

{democracy:32}