sheva warming the bench again ! maybe grant & henk aren’t too bad after all…

Fantastic result @ halftime.

good scores but our game is not as fluent as it should be…glad they took off essien…he was really playing with the game…as if its nothing serious…joe cole keeps loosing the ball…loving drogba and mikel and paulo….sure we would get another goal soon

good result, 2-0 and another clean sheet

I appologize! Grant (with ten Cate’s help) may not be everyone’s first choice as manager. But thus far, he ain’t bad. Sheva is sitting by the Gatorade (or whatever you Englishmen drink). Drogs is picking up where he left off last season. The team has not only survived the shock of September. But, is clawing back in the Prem and in control of their group in the CL. And to make the day better, the Anfield Historical Society LOST! If God doesn’t like Chelsea, he wouldn’t have painted the sky blue.

What’s all of this about Drogba and Lyon?

Just watched the game- a fantastic win for us! Malouda’s goal may have been the ‘keeper’s mistake, but he can always take credit for a shot on goal under pressure. Drogba’s goal off of Paulo’s cross was pure beauty. And Rosenborg beating Valencia 2-nil… that puts an interesting context on things.

this guy needs only a win versus Manchester City to get an A from me.

What’s that stuff Drogba talking about Ballack?

From somebody who watched the game I have a few comments.

” … our first goal was plain lucky for a pointless shot.”

That is a silly comment. Malouda turned Rafinha, their right back, inside out and then managed to shoot between the keepers legs. In normal speed, the ball was travelling fast so the keeper didn’t have much reaction time. Sure, it looks like his mistake, but you cannot say it is “plain lucky” and the shot was “pointless”.

“Second goal was a Drogba special.”

Well, he did well to get on the end of the ball but it wasn’t a Drogba “special”, if you had to give credit to anybody it should be Paulo Ferreira with the pinpoint cross. Not taking it away from Drogs, he did very well to score the goal but by no, wouldn’t call it a special.

Was also good to see Eidur Gudjohnsen watching in the stands next to JT.

@Blue Champion
Before i begin…………i love jose mourinho and have nothing against him.

*Avram Grant is not bad after all! He is winning matches or Chelsea continues to win matches with him as the coach - more of the latter than the earlier, I guess.

sorry to say bc…………..but your attitude is like this…………..if chelsea wins the match……………players won it………….if chelsea lose…………it is due to avram grant……………..ok he is not qualified………he does not have the experience…..whatever…………but jose was not born with barclay’s premier league in his hand or with uefa pro license…….he was given a chance…..he took it………same goes for avram………..if avram inherited a winner squad…….so did jose mourinho………….i don’t get ur point………….ok rainieri could not have won premiership as you claim……..but i feel we came second when arsenal were invincibles…………and we made it to semifinals of uefa cl[best achievemnt of jose with chelsea in europe]……jose inherited cech,lampard,terry,gallas,makelele,duff,gudjohnsen and many..even robben if i am not wrong was bought before tso arrived………and we won our first premiership with those players with addition of only drogba,carvalho,ferreira………….second session only notable addition essien………………we won premiership again……
my point……….pls atleast give him time and pls do not use ur post to critisize the new man in charge.

*We wanted to start well and we did that - not just the goal but by playing good football. Then we rested but we scored early again in the second half and could have had more goals, but the important thing is that we won and continued to improve. Schalke hit the post and I didn’t see what happened with the Alex incident, but we had four or five chances to score again. Today was Roman Abramovich’s 41st birthday so, for him, it’s good. He deserves it and has done so much for the team and the fans, so I wish him a happy birthday

is he lying in those words……….ok first goal was fluke……..so what we scored………we did score again in early half……….we definitely had four or five chances
1.essien header
2.essien 2nd header
3.joe cole shot
4.joe cole in one on one situation wrongly given offside.
and what do you expect him to say……………we played bad football…………….my style was mourinhoish as u will claim……….we won by luck…..we detoriated with every passing minute…………

*about the style of football………..wat do you expect………one fine day we will walk in the stadium and start playin like barca’ or arsenal…………..especially when henk ten cate is not even 2 weeks old………and manager is yet to buy players of his choice
forget everything…………….atleast some time for transition

admit it. malouda set it up well but the goal was a pure fluke. loads of luck. drog goal was class. not many can finish. if he didnt attempt for the goal, that would have been a poor cross. thats football.

nubskeh how would you deliberately attempt to shoot and score between the keeper’s legs? lol!!!

Arthur … wtf? I didn’t say he deliberately attempted to shoot and score between the keepers legs … I just said he turned Rafinha inside out and managed to beat the keeper (through his legs).

Trublu - it wasn’t pure fluke. If you say he had loads of luck because the ball beat the keeper between his legs, then you could say Drogba’s goal was ‘pure fluke’ because the ball just happened to meet up with his run. Malouda’s goal was a well worked goal, and he deserved it. It just happened to be that his shot went through Neuer’s legs.

“If he didn’t attempt for the goal, that would have been a poor cross.” ?? The cross was put in the perfect position for Drogba to get to, behind the defender and in front of the keeper. If he didn’t attempt to get the goal, it would have actually been a great cross that nobody got on the end of.

Oh well, the two goals were very good goals and they won us the match. Lets leave it as that.

ok. we scored a good goal. i’ll leave it at that

@Blue Champion
don’t ur cable wallah show zee sports 12:00…………..the match was there live……………………i watched the whole match with lights off…………without makin a sound…………..so that my parents don’t catch me watching the match when i’m having exams from monday……..

@Blue Champio n everyone
whover did not watch the match,here’s a link for complete highlights
http://www.megavideo.com/?v=J4GA8CCW

just watch avram’s reaction after the first goal,his reaction is so childish and decent………..lol

@TBF

You nailed it. We just need to wait and see what avram is made of and what he has to offer. Hopefully will be what we want and promised.

I don’t give a damn to beautiful football , to me football is score one or two goal and defend when you have a solid defence

Hi BC, Maysam (friend) and footballguy (friend)

I’ve been away from the this blog site for about a month.

To be honest I have lost interest in Chelsea FC when Jose Mouriniho left and I didn’t think that much of Avram Grant.

I’m going to browse through the archive section and catch up on September and October. I would love to read BC’s posts and the get a feeling on how the fans felt over Avram’s tenure.

ps. love you BC (best sports blog), I’m not surprised that Maysam is our top player and please tell me footballguy hasn’t left our blog.

@Maysam

Long time no speak.

ps. I forgot to mention that rugby took up most of my time. I was chuffed when South Africa won the World Cup France 2007, for obvious reasons. The Springboks really put a smile on my face.

I would just like to show the bokke (Springboks) how proud I am of them and would like to send my message in Afrikaans.

“Julle het baie goed gespeel and ek dink dat julle is rerig die beste span in die wereld.”

Where is footballguy?

@True Blue Fusion

If you dont expect them to play like barca in a few months then why the hell is he bragging about a thing which isnt happening???

grants post match comments are ridiculous. I was so happy with the win but his post match comments took out all the happiness of it. chelsea played good. just leave it to that. when were we not positive?

Jol finally sacked!! where will spurs finish this season??? who will come next???

@BC

i thought u had chelseatv connection. I was about to ask for comments on it as i m planning to have one? any comments?

@Nihongo Blue
he actuallt said in complete interview that we can plat better……….he just said we played good and positive………..wat’s wrong in it?????

Well Avant Gram ,is making me feel happy, after all we are still alive and improving, I think Ten kate (or wathever name he has) is our hope for good football. I want more game by the wings.

Michael Mariens :
Actually that happened to me too , but I love Chelsea in every condition. with Jose or without Jose .
I liked Jose but he was not more popular than Zola , Flo , Vialli or Di matteo to me. They are gone but I am still a chelsea fan , why should I leave Chelsea for jose ?

about Grant , I did not like him first, but he has showed he is trustworthy . Grant needs a win versus Manchester City to get an ‘A’ from me.

CHELSEA forever.

by the way , Welcome Back .

Liverpool 1-2 Beshektash ,
pressure on Benitez.
is he next ?

I really counted on them , i thought Benitez is good enough to win everything with a good squad , however he showed that he is not. Maybe he is , it is too soon to judge.

@true blue fusion

i have a problem when he in each post match interview comment about the playing style improvement. can any one see any noticeable improvement yet with normal eyes? change it and then speak about it and not even need to say about it… people will say it!!… i am worried that is he focusing on winning the league or not?

anyways big matches this weekend.. we need to win and ill hope for a loserpool and arsenal draw.. we will benifit the most at least for present table .

Power of a Good coach & an Excellent Striker

It’s been quite a while that I have written about any Blue’s happening, Why? Simple, nothing much was happening on the front of attractive football claims, plus Grant was still in the coaching seat. I was expecting that till now we would be having someone like Klinsman, Basten or even Guss into the coaching role. Now that was me being very optimistic!!!! However progressive managements get progressive coaches e.g; Spurs ditching Martin Jol for Juande Ramos, some might argue that this swap is somewhat a compromise as Ramos was also struggling with his former club Sevilla, absolutely horrific season for their standards. At least I am in favour of this decision on two fronts;

1- Ramos is known in the football fraternity as a topflight coach & he can reel in high quality players.
2- We had one of the most entertaining characters in EPL named as Jose however now they have Ramos “Jose & Arsene rolled into one”.

So you have to worry about another club that might push you further down the ladder.

The blues post Murinho is doing pretty good not exceptional but it’s the right direction however the football I see is non strategic in nature which means that we play every game as it comes & entertain the crowd. Don’t emphasize on defense just be aggressive concede a few goals during the way, so minus Cech in the equation you would see score lines like 3-2, 4-3, 3-1 etc where you win but concede. The only difference that I see in the post Murinho outfit is more forward pushing where defense has gaps. JM was worried about the whole campaign not just a particular game; this is exactly the difference between the two managements (most critics have written us off).

Lets talk about Avram Grant a little, I do give him credit of hanging in their when the chips were down and taking over such a crucial job could be nightmarish however he has administered this position pretty well, so he is a good administrator but extremely boring on the sidelines. Although I do like Henk & Clarke jumping and having expressions on the sidelines, especially when you compare the era of the Special one.

It is too early to talk about Henk’s contribution for the Blues, his Barca days were in distant past maybe the game has changed a bit from that time however I wish that his aggressive & attacking football would still be imprinted on the blues.

Now lets talk about all the games that we have won so far minus one or two striking contributions by Kalou & Malouda its been “Drogba” the dissatisfied striker from Ivory coast & his good form. Drogba is the only life line we have in terms of a finisher at the moment & rather than giving Pizzaro more playing time so that he can take over the role when Drogba is off to the African Cup, we are still playing Sehva as the second in command striker. That’s where you need managers not administrators!!!

Overall I feel the CL fixture & the EPL games did show improvement however is that an improvement or any extension of the past efforts or simply a couple of players getting back in form. One thing is decided that we have one of the most boring & unanimated sidelines in the EPL however I look forward for some more expensive suits from Henk to lighten up the sidelines as AV has no style. All sports channels keep on showing these videos of JM & his charismatic personality with fun all around him, his shadow will hang over us for long and comparisons will be made. Seeing Rafa struggle so bad I feel that JM’s exit was not that bad after all.

Park you with a thought that “More goal scorer’s will get you more goals however more striker won’t get you anywhere”.

Fox Soccer channel is gonna broadcast Chelsea-Shalcke at 6:00 AM tomorrow (Firday) .
I am gonna watch that game in order to see how the game was. I have just watched the highlight of the game.

Most of the Championships League matches are shown in Ten Sports & Zee Sports here in India

Jose Mouriniho leaving Chelsea does not spell the end, for success at Stamford Bridge.

Yes J.Mouriniho played an important part in the team winning trophies, but their are alot of other coaches in this world.

I would like to see someone with the calibre of Frank Rykaard coaching Chelsea in future.

Martin Jol was a good coach at Spurs and didn’t need to get sacked. Spurs was always this medium-sized club going nowhere and Jol was actually taking them somewhere, by allowing them to consistenly finish 5th in the EPL. The next logical step was to compete with the top four, for a CL spot. I think that his sacking was a bit premature.

Remember that 7 of Shalke’s regular’s were not involved in the game.

And Sheva the Diva looked shitty as usual and probably did not even get a touch of the ball.

But Grant looked much better than usual : gotta ask him what night cream he uses,

But anyways Good match and tons of luck and many goals from Drogs and Lamps

Like u guys I am a bit worried that the football does look a bit more ” beautiful “, yes a lot more one touch stuff and gung-ho.

It’s alright against the lesser sides (until they find out how to neutralize us, which Sven and co are gonna try to do today)

But against the biggies ? Will see how it turns out.

It’s just this something ( I don’t know what ) is niggling me at the moment.

I am sure we’re getting a bit better on the entertainment side ,sunny side up but against sides with tactical wisdom and wiles , I don’t know.

[...] (more…) [...]