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.

derby_chelsea.PNGPlaying 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]