Chelsea 1-1 Bolton | All Over But Chin Up! | Blue Champions

Chelsea 1-1 Bolton | All Over But Chin Up! - [BlueChampion]

Mon, May 12, 2008

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Man Utd are the champions and deservedly so. Chelsea lost the title rather honourably. I’m happy and proud that we put up a strong title challenge that made Man Utd wait until the last 10 minutes of the last day to confirm their title. I was hoping that we end up on level points but yet another goal conceded at stoppage time meant we end with 2 points less than Man Utd.

I don’t want to go into the details of this match or the Man Utd match. But it’s fair to say that Wigan put up a better fight that Bolton but still Man Utd won and we drew. That kind of sums it up. In fact the goal that we conceded just reminded us why we were second best in terms of points. Our repeated mistake of concentration lapse at the stoppage time, may be, cost us the title. At least we did not pose like probable champions until January and crumble when it mattered, we did not give away a 11-point lead to finish third having to play champions league qualifiers. We had the Man Utd supporters on the radio until the 80th minute of the last day. Now, that’s a title challenge.

On the minus side, we had JM getting sacked, behind the scenes drama, some players missing out due to injuries, players at African Cup of Nations and two not one title contenders to deal with. On the plus side, we had timely reinforcements, no one having to play out of position, some players getting accustomed to the new league and getting back their form, the key players still retaining their hunger to win trophies despite all rumours about their future and Grant deciding not to change the winning formula one bit.

Man Utd were more consistent and thoroughly deserved the title, just like last season. They played brilliant football and saw excellent results with their football. They are a fantastic young team who can only get better in the next few years. Lot of them have not won much and they are hungry like hell. I won’t be surprised that we will go through another wave of Man Utd dominance in the premier league unless some ground breaking change happens somewhere. Chelsea on the other hand have a very matured and experienced squad some of whom have achieved and won quite a lot and may not be as hungry as Man Utd youngsters. We need to trim the extra fat from the squad and bring in some hungry young players who can play like men.

Last season, we lost the title and had the last laugh at Wembley in the FA cup finals. This time, I hope we finish this season with a victory at Moscow. It’s all or nothing at Moscow. If we win, we will be the champions of Europe and lots of things will be forgotten. If we lose, it will be, to put it plainly, a trophyless season. Head to head with Man Utd, we have been the better team over the last few seasons. On the 21st of May, you’ll see a confirmation of this. Shevchenko to score the winner at Moscow!

Written By BlueChampion

27 Responses For This Post. Add Your Comments Here!

Bravo Manchester United….only U can be Champions…..i love MU…

i think jose holiday had a valid point when he said chelseas success has much to do with owners absence….

Shoudnt the name of this site be changed? Blue Champions?hehe. Shame for terry

guys, don´t worry, we still have champions league to whip MU´s ***

i hope jt and riccky will be fit for champs league final .we have destiny in our own hands at least we can win it no 2 ways about it.go chelsea win champions league

infact this could be the cause for desire to be EU champions!!!

yeah i agree this will inspire us to win in europe

The pattern continues-

man utd wins when real wins
Chelsea wins when barca wins
Arsey wins when Valencia wins.

Congrats to the blue though. Witrh all our crisis, the biggest being the shock departure of Jose our major inspirer, we still run the so st Manure squad all the way to the finish. The spirit of our boyz is simply unmatchable. But for those deiificult to explain last minutes goals conceded against fulham, Villa, spurs and Wigan and manures luck in getting late equalisers against spurs, boro and blackburn, we would have won this title by a mile. Credit to the great spirit of our boys and let us repeat what happened last season by beating in the who is who in the Moscow “Wembley.”

@51 Aman

“Shoudnt the name of this site be changed? Blue Champions?hehe. Shame for terry”

Wonder what Man U season would have been had Ronaldo got injured. Remember the first 4 matches , with Ronaldo and Rooney out , goals were not coming from any where .. So thank god for that ?

Considering the crisis , injuries chelsea had all season, it is truly remarkable, that the title was decided on the last day.

Exactly Krishna,
I’m really proud that we made it to the final day of the season before losing our title challenge. With all our injuries and absentees - during the African Nations Cup - it was absolutely amazing that we managed to win every game in January and even then it seemed that we were a long way off being able to claim the title and look where we got to.
It was unlikely that we were going to be able to snatch the title off of United and therefore I am not too unhappy with today’s results, our realistic chance of silverware is of course in the Champions League.
I’m confident that we can win the Champions League without Terry but with him I would be totally confident, let’s just hope that his injury is not as bad as it looked.

Terry’s a great leader, and a good defender, but I have no doubt Chelsea
will be able to suffice with Alex who is probably just as good as if not
better than John Terry. You guys had a great season despite the ACN and
Mourinho leaving, so take heart. Can’t wait for May 21st lads! MAN UTD!

@ 59

Alex is just as good if not better than John Terry?

What reality are you in?

Sad guys very sad
But at the same time I congratulate ManU as they really played more consistently over the season.

We will win the Champs League! Period!

how about ashley cole kicking that ball of the line, that was amazing that would have been 2-1

finally, man utd win the title. im happy that we kept them on their toes for so long. but did you see how man utd played with 12 players on the pitch. that bought off ref did not send off scholes and did not give a clear penalty to wigan. both these incidents happened before cron scored his millionth penalty of the season

and why again did we concede in the dying minutes? it’s getting bloody frustrating. is it grant’s style? we’ve lost points in about 8 games after leading in them. about 4 or 5 games we conceded in the last couple of minutes. how can we keep repeating the mistakes match after match?

man utd deserved the title. we made it this far thanks to some key players’ determination and loads of luck.

i expected manu to win but did not expect us to draw. that was disgusting. to say that we lost on goal diff is much better than saying that we lost on all accounts - points, goal difference, head-to-head - everything.

i don’t want to see our important players leave. these are the guys who are the flag bearers of our spirit. money cannot buy spirit. anelka is a good example. even if he scores 40 goals every season, he does not have the spirit. look at him when we win and look at him when we lose - all the same. that can be his personality but he is not someone who will send good vibes around the team. look at drogba, essien, terry, lampard etc. they are the champion players. i hope they all stay.

grant says this after the match, about the title:

“We cannot say we are disappointed because we were never in first place to lose it, so we need to be very proud of what we did this year”

it would be nicer if he showed disappointment that contentment. how can not be disappointed when we came so close and lost the title? may be he was expected to come second and he is happy that ‘HE’ achieved it instead of worrying about what Chelsea wants to achieve.

See what Ballack says:

“Everybody is a little bit disappointed but in one or two days we will have switched and be looking forward to the final in Moscow”

Now, that’s a lot better. Grant may have spoken the truth. Sometimes, people in power should not just be speaking truth, they must exude confidence, courage and pride with their words.

i mentioned earlier that when ever we won against arsenal or man utd or liverpool in all cases their top defender was injured and had to be replaced during the match.

see when we are under similar conditions what happens even against bolton!!

spot on NB. i saw that analysis of yours. that was very interesting! i think we would have conceded even with terry on. that’s because the principles and discipline are slowly going out of the window. did you see how much of communication gap was there between cech and the defenders? something’s wrong and the positive results have papered over the cracks for now.

>>”…no one having to play out of position..”
Only Essien was forced to play RB/CB for the umpteenth time by that $#% Grant.

>>”Man Utd were more consistent…”
Indeed, not just in playing well but also being favourite to all referees. It happens with Real Madrid in Spain, Milan clubs in Italy and B.Munich in Germany. Legacy clubs are always given that extra edge by referees. Man Utd were lucky to be not down to 9 men. Replays clearly showed Ferdinand putting out the arm, letting the ball hit the bicep (and not the fingers or edge of the arm), then pulling out the arm dramatically so that refs would think of it to be unintentional.
Scholes’ tackle should’ve resulted in a red card, but again, Man Utd are always favoured. Not just in these situations, but also any punishments dished out by FA. JM said it, Rafa said it - and we all know it. I guess you can’t expect the world to be fair in any way.

As Macca (of ESPN) said it, when it is Manchester United, playing for the title, no ref would dare to send off players because of the potential examination by FA, manager and fans after the match.

>>”..Shevchenko to score the winner at Moscow…”
Ironic, isn’t it? Sheva missed in 2005, has been off-form ever since, and now in the match before CL, scores Chelsea’s only goal. Kudos to Grant for bringing him on early and not in the 94th minute.

I hope he pairs Drogba and Sheva up front - Anelka has been distinctively out of form and hunger for success. Perhaps his only notable contributions were a glancing header to the path of Drogba who scored, and that cross to Drogba for goal against Liverpool.

If Sheva scores the winning goal at Moscow, then that alone will justify his price tag of 30m

Sheva will go to Milan at the end of the season, and I can predict that it will be a bigger loss for us than buying him for 30m. He’ll probably get back to good form, and Milan will have got a good bargain. Players of class can only be out of form for so long, after all.

yea, during the time of JM, manager took all the pressure. he designed the tactics and he used to shape the game like he wanted it to be. And the players understood excatly what their manager wanted of them. Every game was a piece of art, defensively tight, tactically strong and, for most of the league games, most offensive when the other side would get too tired running here and there or would sleep.

After his departure it has been just the opposite. Its only the players who have shown their qualities (well they showed they worth more than 200 million pounds!!! In fact half of our regulars would have worth more than 200 million) and they were the ones who took all the pressure. We went defensively loose, tactically weak, and offensive most of the times. Infact, the opponents scored when we slept. We had lucky wins, and there were very few truely deserved wins.

I still don´t like Grant and would still say he overachieved things due to his luck. I always felt Steve and CAte were the ones working behind the scenes and Grant taking all the credits. But its worthless dicussing that right now. I just hope we get hold of right manager next season.

Yes, and yet Chelsea somehow always found a way to lose to Liverpool…JM and all.
The last minute goals are worrying, I don’t know what it is. Could be Grant, or the players just thinking they have it locked, because it seems to happen against weaker competition more often (could be wrong on this). But all in all, ManU is a better team. I’m shocked Chelsea even made it this close. I’ll be even more shocked if Chelsea wins in Moscow.

What manager do people even want? I hear Rijkaard is possible. But Barcelona has not been great the last few years, am I wrong (did they win anything lately)?

As “rookie” (for all practical purposes), Grant did a good job (under hostile circumstances).

For a team like chelsea, we need a manager who hasn´t (or lets say very few) tasted defeat. A special new blood who is hungry for trophies, a special one who can inspire the team, and a special one who is good with press! not Riikard, not likes of Fabio capello, but a special one, very much (or completely different) like that of JM.

Hi Guys..

The reason we lost the EPL was our HORRIBLE defending from set pieces & throw ins.

Throughout the season we have struggled when any team kicks or throws the ball in the AIR into our box..a sort of panic n madness & we have paid dearly almost all the time.

1-1 against Everton, Wigan & Bolton
4-4 Against Villa & Spurs

All these games, we conceded in the dying seconds..thats 10 points dropped in INJURY TIME…

The most irritating thing is that 4 of those 5 games were at Stamford bridge..

Add to that list, the toothless 0-0 displays at home against Blackburn,Fulham & Liverpool…

Our home record has been poor..we havent lost, but we have dropped far too many points to b champions

However, it is a season we can b proud of..we pushed man utd to the wire..

10 days to go..Probably the biggest night in CFC’s history…We have to win the UCL..

I hope the players pick themselves up n give united a proper trashing at moscow.

Cheers

We shouldn’t get too downbeat about this whole ‘losing’ the title rubbish, it wasn’t even ‘our’ tile in the first place.
We did well, really well in fact to come back from the position that we found ourselves in, in January and push United all the way for the bloody thing in the first place.
At least we don’t have to go through the qualification stages of the Champions League at the start of next season.
Moscow is what we should be thinking about. We’ve done really well to get to this point after years of disappointment and if you want the truth, for me the Champions League is what I really want. I would have told you that at the start of the season.

Blue Champions - Chelsea Fan Blog

Chelsea 1-1 Bolton | All Over But Chin Up! - [BlueChampion]

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