Similar display as the earlier leg. Almost the same number of shots but four of them hit the net this time. Drogba’s goal spree continues and confirms us the top spot in our group.

I didn’t see the match. The text I read about the match tells me we completely controlled the game and Rosenborg hardly got a sniff at the goal. Rosenborg can still get eliminated if Schalke beats Rosenborg in the final leg in December.

I did get to see the goals though. Drogba scored the first one pouncing on a rebound. It was a 30 yard shot from Joe Cole that was parried by the keeper, and Drogba took control and finished it brilliantly amidst lot of challenges around him. Second goal was a mini goal mouth scramble at the end of which Drogba saw the ball at his feet which he finished with authority. For the third Alex took a long direct free kick, where the ball bounced more than once and took minor deflection on its way to the bottom left corner. For the fourth one, Essien smashed one from the edge of the box which was again parried by the keeper only to see Joe Cole tap in at a near-open goal.

Drogba will keep scoring but we need to see Sheva and Pizarro among goals soon. We should see Sheva and Pizarro start in the Valencia match at home. Drogba must have been looking for his champions league hattrick when Avram subbed him at the 68th minute. I guess that was a good decision. The match was already in the pocket so it makes more sense to allow Sheva, Pizarro and Kalou. In fact, he brought on all these three in a space of 5 mins.

Avram Grant after the match:

I told you from the first time, we want to play positive, attacking football and I’m very happy with what’s happened. We have played better from game to game, tactically and good attacking football. We are in the next round and it leaves us in a good position. We are playing good football, and scored four goals. I think we also created many more chances. Most importantly we qualified to the second round, even after we dropped two points in the first game, so I’m happy with that.

Nothing that you did not expect. Almost the same text – ‘we are playing positive football, we are playing good football, we are scoring goals’. Read that last line, that silly cunning line – ‘we qualified . . even after we dropped two points in the first game’. C’mon, it’s getting way too stupid, Mr. Grant! To draw the first of six matches is such a handicap in progressing to the next group? Liverpool lost the first three and are on course to qualify. Now that’s something worth mentioning. At this rate, Avram is certainly not going to win the trust of fans or even the Press.

Last season too, we topped our group despite having mighty Barcelona and Werder Bremen (they just beat Real Madrid tonight) along with us. This season again we top the group and as you know the biggest advantage of winning the group is you get to play the second leg at home in the knockout round. Also, you’ll get a second placed team of any other group, well, that can be tricky. Arsenal finished second this time and Roma too. We still have to see which other teams (may be Liverpool, Real Madrid etc) finish second spot and be a probable challenge.

For now, let’s just look at the West Ham game.

The last time we played Rosenborg, it turned out to be an important day in Chelsea’s modern history. I don’t think it should be difficult for us to get a point or three this time but we have every reason to be serious about this match. Rosenborg has beaten Valencia fair and square at the Mestalla in the biggest shock of this champions league so far.

In team news, Drogba could be back. Avram secretively let out the secret. Return of Drogba could mean Avram persisting with 4-3-3. Sheva could be on the bench. By current form, I would put Joe Cole ahead of SWP on the right wing and Malouda on the right. If we take a handsome lead in the first half Kalou can replace Drogba. Midfield should be Essien, Makelele and Mikel giving some rest to Lampard. Surely Mikel because, he has the experience of playing in Norwegian conditions. Back four would be Terry, Alex, Belletti and Bridge.

A draw is enough in this match but Avram says we’d go for a win.

All my life in football I didn’t say we’d take a draw. We want to win even here. We know we are playing a very good team. We remember the first game, it was not so good for us, but most important is we qualify. The players like to win.

Must be joking, right? If I’ve spent 20 years as a football coach, I would have had numerous occasions where I’d say ‘we’d take a draw’. All legendary managers would have done this. It’s just getting your priorities right. ‘We want to win’ is a motherhood statement. Any team that comes to the pitch wants to win, no matter who the opponent is. But does that mean our tactics would be to win the match? For instance, if we equalise at the 70th minute, we would push for a win at the risk conceding another one?

Also, he wouldn’t miss a chance to touch upon the special one:

We are not happy from a draw at home, we remember this game, it feels like a long time ago, but half of the stadium was empty, and supporters were booing us at half-time. The result was not so good but since then we won a lot of games, and are in a better position in the Champions League.

Supporters booing us at half time? I didn’t know. I don’t think so. Read the last line of the last paragraph. This is where I lose patience on him. His constant message has been ‘he was bad for us, he left and now I’ve made everything work’. This kind of trumpeting stinks. I wish he does not talk about his wins until he wins a couple of league titles. By the way, that 1-1 draw against Rosenborg was one of the best matches of this season but still we couldn’t win even after 29 shots!

Back to this match, we are going to playing in Norway in sub-zero temperatures. It’s going to bloody cold and upsets have happened in such conditions. When Arsenal lost to CSKA in Moscow last season, weather was a deciding factor. The weather forecast in Trondheim says, it could snow tomorrow night while the temperature could be around ‘minus 5′ degrees!

Look at what Yssouf Kone, the Rosenborg striker says about the group and this Chelsea match:

When we saw the draw, we saw Chelsea, Schalke and Valencia. No one else thought we had a chance – now we do have chances to be the first in the group. Right now we have real confidence – we are not waiting for Chelsea and treating them as a big team, they have to take us seriously as we will give our best to beat them. We need to win against them; it will be a historic result if we beat them.

They hold an advantage in terms of form, morale, weather, home stadium etc. They have already beaten Valencia home and away. It’s clear, they want to beat Chelsea and make history. They want to top the group as much as we want. In such circumstances, we need to beat them tactically. I’m very curious to see how we would react to certain situations tomorrow. I’d like see intelligent football as against adventurous football tomorrow. I’d predict for a 2-0 Chelsea win.

Not sure if I’d be able to watch this match live. I might have to web-watch this match I guess.

Okay, you expected a 5-0 or 6-0. That’s allright. We won when Man Utd lost. Points count more than goals. Did I expect such a scoreline? No I didn’t but I certainly thought it could be a 3-0 or something.

Man City were our most friendly opponent to date. That time I had written that Chelsea played well but we could not have got 6-0 without poor defending which included allowing us space and time in dangerous areas. Today, Derby didn’t surprise us. They put men behind ball and waiting for their odd chances or a gift from somewhere. What we couldn’t do very well was to break their resolute defence down and steal a few more goals.

It was such a relief to see Sheva starting in this match. Playing in the company of Kalou and SWP means he is not going to see the ball enough. Both Kalou and SWP are not ‘lone-striker-friendly’ wingers. Sheva would have done lot better if he had had Malouda and Joe Cole on either sides. Sheva hardly got any service but whenever he got involved he was quite good.

Our first goal was set up by a string of simple and straight passes until Sidwell let one through for Kalou to have a superb touch and even better finish. We have seen Kalou
missing sitters and missing open goals (one in this match too!) but the one like his goal today is what makes us retain the faith in his talent and hope he’d be a top player soon. His goal today reminded me of Shevchenko of Milan. He has scored loads like this one in Serie A. He had this pace, touch and control to score such goals then.

By the 15th minute, I was kind of convinced that I’m not going to see too many goals in this match. While Derby was happy sitting back, we lacked the teeth in our attack to really cut them through. The ball was won and lost in the midfield so often that despite having 65% possession in the first half we could only get 2 shots on goal. And all this was against Derby County, sitting at No.20 with a negative goal difference of 28 and conceding 4 or more goals in about 5 matches!

The second half was much more exciting as Derby started venturing out for goal. We didn’t play as well as we should have. And that meant Derby was growing in confidence every minute. The one goal lead looked more and more thin as Derby started to threaten Chelsea. Kenny Miller was perfectly onside when he got that ball and chipped it for a legitimate goal. But if the flag wasn’t up so early, Carlo would have made a better attempt and Kenny might have been under genuine pressure.

SWP must not have started ahead of Joe Cole and should not have stayed long enough on the pitch to get this goal against his name. He was his typical self with his beating-defenders-and-losing-ball routine. He was quite often annoying Shevchenko for fancying shots from tight angles instead of passing it to Shevchenko, who was in space and
was in the right place. Lampard made this beautiful run and hit a bar-thudding shot which fell at SWP’s feet for him to just pull the trigger, which he did with a cool head. There was some controversy about the build up to this goal on whether Sheva’s tackle was a fair one or not. I think it was a fair tackle but sad that Barnes got injured, which added spice to the incident.

Mikel was brilliant all through, Sheva was impressive despite his minimal involvement, Lampard was good as ever and unlucky not to score, defence was all right except that Ashley Cole should realise that most of the Derby attacks came from his side and Carlo was calm and composed.

With just seconds to go for the final whistle, this incredible thing happened. Michael Essien got himself a red card. My stance is, it is certainly not a straight red. Absolutely not. Essien had the ball, he had someone tugging his shirt, and the natural momentum of his natural movement of his arms meant he was shoving the guy behind. Essien couldn’t even have seen if he was making contact to his face or his chest. If the referee still wanted to card him, yellow at worst. It’s so annoying because this means he would miss the next three domestic matches which includes our trip to the Emigrants stadium on Dec 16. Essien is exactly the type of player who can be most effective against Arsenal. I hope Chelsea FC appeals against this card and we get something out of the appeal.

Playing against Derby in their current form, we should have demolished them. At least we should have dominated them. By domination, I’m not talking about goals here. It’s about controlling and dictating the proceedings and making them play to our tunes. It almost went to an extent that a 1-1 draw would have been a fair result. I believe we are over-emphasising or over-doing this round passing stuff. Ground passing is nice but when teams like Derby are defending in numbers, quick and effective way to break their discipline would be by aerial attacks. Aerial ability/attack is our area of strength.

Anyway, a win is a win. We stay at No.4, one point ahead of Liverpool while they have a match in hand. John Terry says that ‘we should go on a run of 10 or 15 games and this game is a good start’. While I’d have just said that this game is a start, to be talking about a run of 10 or 15 matches, we should be doing lot better in the next few matches. We’ve just won a game, three nice points and here I am still finding faults and hoping for better. I’m sorry I can’t help it. I say what I want to, I don’t complicate.

[tags]Chelsea, Derby, Avram Grant, Kalou, Shaun Wright Phillips, Shevchenko, John Terry, premier league, pride park[/tags]

Long, for once interesting, international break is over. The core of the Chelsea XI would be a disappointed lot as they are missing out on Euro 2008. In these circumstances, you won’t get a better premier league opponent than Derby County.

I’m unable to blog much today hence a short match preview. I can surely cover the team selection part. If Shevchenko does not start today, I don’t know when will he start. The kind of time Sheva needs on the ball is always given by such teams and he has always taken advantage of that. Since he came to Chelsea, he has been scoring against lowly opponents consistently and his League Cup scoring record shows that.

A goal fest should improve the morale of the English nationals after the mid-week disappointment. That’s why I want to see a strong 4-3-3 which should not make us ask if it is a 4-5-1.

Update: The team is just announced. Chelsea going for a 4-3-3 with 23 Carlo Cudicini, 35 Juliano Belletti, 22 Tal Ben-Haim, 26 John Terry (c), 3 Ashley Cole, 9 Steve Sidwell, 12 John Mikel Obi, 8 Frank Lampard, 24 Shaun Wright-Phillips, 7 Andriy Shevchenko, 21 Salomon Kalou. Substitutes: 40 Hilario, 33 Alex, 5 Michael Essien, 10 Joe Cole, 14 Claudio Pizarro.

The drama is over. England is finally eliminated, at Wembley of all places. England lost 2-3 after being down 0-2 in just under 15 mins. Lampard took the responsibility, showed his composure as he scored a cool penalty. Croatia were deserved winners but to be fair, England did deserve a point. Euro 2008 will go ahead without one of the football ‘powerhouses’. It’s very difficult to accept the fact that England won’t be playing in Euro 2008, but it’s official now.

It was not because England could not avoid defeat to Croatia. It was more because they dropped points all along. There will be more and more discussions now on foreign players, quota systems, youth talent etc. All said, it’s a shame that England won’t be there in Euro 2008.

From a Chelsea perspective, about half of our first choice team can rest (less injuries?) in summer and come back fresh for the next season. For the number of matches played by the English Chelsea players, not playing the Euro could be of some help, how much ever they hate to watch Euro on TV.

McClaren might count his days or hours. Are we going to see the return of Jose?
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Excitement is rising day by day as super bowl 2008 is approaching. However in the mean time US Open golf champion ship is going to held as well. People are rushing for the cheap vacation packages on both the places. However golfers can book golf vacation package at Arizona as well. For the people crazy about golf it is the best time to celebrate the mega event and enjoy a golf holiday as well. However as Christmas is approaching people are getting crazy for snow shoeing and hence booking ski vacation resorts as well.

If the answer is yes, it would be a shame! I want to start this discussion by looking at what this monster of ACN means for us. The fact is that we are talking about 5 premiership games, that’s it. Three of them are home matches. Here is the list – Tottenham (H), Birmingham (A), Reading (H), Portsmouth (A) and Liverpool (H). And there could be champions league matches as well.

Generally, missing couple of key players for a period of four weeks, especially by Chelsea’s recent standards, is something normal. We have managed absences before. With the worst of injury crisis, we ended at No.2 with just 6 points difference and stayed in all competitions as on the beginning of May. We didn’t have enough quality back ups then in defence and also at goal.

Now, Drogba, Essien, Mikel and Kalou would be out for a period of 4 – 5 weeks. In my view, it’s more difficult to replace Essien/Mikel than Drogba/Kalou. I know, with Drogba/Kalou, we’re talking about nearly one-third of our goals scored this season. After all, we have Shevchenko and Pizarro to back up. Both of them are established players and have been here long enough to have got the hang of it. I see that one of them or even both them can get injured during that time to make things worse.

If that’s the worry then we should be getting some decent strikers on loan and not buying them. My problem with buying them is that we might have to offload a couple of them in May or later. With Roman determined to see Shevchenko retire at Chelsea, I don’t want the axe to fall on Kalou. He is a good young prospect who is thrown at the highest degree of football so early. He would improve with time. He has the qualities of a legendary striker.

We should start using Shevchenko and Pizarro as soon as possible. They should be match fit and have good match practice and confidence by the time they become the primary strike force in Jan and Feb. See, we have the match against Derby this weekend. I’m gonna scream is I see a 4-3-3 with Drogba as the centre forward. This is the perfect opportunity to play 4-4-2 with Sheva and Pizarro.

Hoping that at least one of them would always be available, I should say that we should not buy players rather we can get someone on loan. In Shevchenko and Pizarro, we have players with some incredible goal scoring records. What would they be thinking if the club goes and buys more strikers because Drogba an Kalou are out for few weeks. They’d know that we played a full strength Man Utd in the community shield match without any striker in the starting line-up and still did not lose in full time plus extra time. So it’s certainly manageable for a short period of time but cannot be sustained for too long.

Finally, it all boils down to Avram’s trust on Sheva and Pizarro, and how efficiently he can use them. If Avram is not going to use Shev/Pizarro in this situation, there is no point in having them any longer. He should get rid of them and buy new strikers of his choice. In a few weeks time, every striker on earth would be linked with Chelsea. If Avram has plans of using only Sheva/Pizarro, he should come and convey that clearly so that these guys don’t have follow the rumours with butterflies in their stomach.

What’s your take on what we need to do about the striker situation in Jan and Feb?

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After a couple of utterly sick days, I’m back and I bring some Chelsea news including the shocker that Ballack indeed would be back, Kenyon visits India (no, he didn’t board the wrong flight), why you should be following Luka Modric and why Joe Cole is paying only for Ben Haim’s holiday.

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So we get to the business end of the Euro 2008 qualifiers. After tonight’s matches and/or the ones during the midweek, we would know those 16 teams that would compete for the Euro 2008 championships at Austria/Switzerland.

BBC clearly lays out all permutations and combinations of the qualifying round and results. Very informative page this one, where you can make what set of results you should pray for, to get your team to Euro 2008.

I felt really sorry for Scotland. I hoped for the ‘Bravehearts’ to qualify and even beat Italy. The Blues beat the Scots right at the stoppage time to get qualified not only themselves but also France.

England gets a lucky reprieve as Israel beats Russia 2-1. This could even be a case of delaying the inevitable. My stance is very clea. I want England to play in the Euro 2008. As much as I’d like to see lesser teams, in a competition of this magnitude, teams like England should play, much for the complexion of the event.

Agreed that England have been playing very mediocre football for all the talent they have in the squad. Do deserve to be playing in Euro 2008? We’ll know the answer only next week. If they end up in the top 2 of the group, they deserve it. That’s it, it’s that simple. I believe in the table, the results and the points. There is no other better indicator than the table itself.

England’s dull displays are a matter of collective failure. There were hardly a few heroes in the England team in this qualification matches so far. Of course, Steven Gerrard can put in garbage after garbage but still not get the blame. As I’ve always said, McClaren should trust Peter Crouch to do the job. Long Pete’s been brilliant for Liverpool as well as England. Michael Owen is once again injured which makes Crouch’s start a certain thing against a strong Croatia.

England would face probably their strongest opponent of the qualifying round when they play Croatia. Two important factors in favour of England are, they are playing at home and Croatia has already qualified. If Croatia were still playing for qualification, I would put my money on Croatia to beat England.

Last week, I was playing FIFA 08 on XBOX 360 with my friends. After a thorough beating in a custom champions league, we thought let’s give PES6 a try. After we bought FIFA 08, we had not played PES6 at all. After we loaded the PES6, within seconds from kick-off, we realised that something was not okay with PES. We simply could not relate to the arcade style of PES anymore. We didn’t even finish the half. We switched back to FIFA 08, back to real football gaming!

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