Would you believe it? The match in Moscow yesterday had to go to penalties and we lost it again! I almost had this cruel headline ‘we continue from where we left last season’. It must be some sort of record to lose twice on penalties in the same city within 90 days. Ok, I know it’s just a friendly but defeat hurts. If it was a stand alone friendly, I’d have cared less. This was friendly cup and to start with the season with a trophy would have been very nice.

Just when I thought that we have exorcised the ghost of the champions league final, the ‘Moscow shootout’ comes back to haunt us. It’s not so much about the defeat. It’s the lost shootout that’s going to bother all. More painful fact was that it had so much similarity to the champions league final. We were ahead in the shootout and the penalty that would have won us the match was missed, they score and we miss. Wayne Bridge’s penalty would have gone in 9 out of 10 times. It was just a great save. Sheva should have buried it too but the keeper just got a bit lucky. That was the fifth consecutive penalty shootout lost by Chelsea. I don’t want the players to get psyched out by the whole shootout thing.

Anyway, there were a lot of pluses. Deco was a treat to watch. He keeps showing us that he has a lot to offer and he’s no way past his prime as claimed by Laporta. I loved the way he took his penalty. Hint of arrogance than a show of confidence. The prospect of watching Deco this season really excites me. We played quite well. The Chelsea goal was a brilliant one. Is Anelka reading this blog? He is becoming useful nowadays. It was his smart inch perfect chest-pass that allowed Essien to blast one before anyone could blink. And yes, it was a fabulous cross from Deco to Anelka. You know what, Deco rocks!

We dominated the match for about 70 minutes I can say. We should have won the match in the full time. Again, reminiscent of last season, we conceded one in the last 10 minutes of the game, that too from a free kick. It will have to go into Petr Cech’s account. He should have stopped it but he was a bit slow to react. Completely avoidable goal. We were easily the better team tonight but we were the better team on the champions league final too. Being a better team did not help then and tonight’s no different.

What was very disappointing was the performances of Shevchenko, Malouda and SWP. I’ll pardon Anelka as he had a role in the goal. Sheva’s body language was all wrong. I don’t think he sees too many days for himself at Chelsea. SWP was the same – a deadly combination of very silly decision making and pathetic execution. Everytime, Scolari wants to play SWP, he should be reminded of Scott Sinclair. I’ll bet my house on Sinclair faring lot better than SWP every single time. To think that Malouda was playing the area of the pitch where Arjen Robben was playing . . . phew.

Of course Scolari is going to underplay the defeat saying that this is just a friendly. I’ll buy that but when we get to penalties, your efforts can be just the same for a friendly or a final, right? What the heck, it’s not just the effort, even the result seem to be the same. I’m sure that we took this game rather seriously and wanted to play the finals. We played a strong team too. Do I sound very disappointed already? Anyway, it’s just a friendly right? No big deal. And the premier league season has not even started yet. This match summed up the last season in some ways – we played well but couldn’t win, we concede in a set piece, Petr Cech makes a mistake, we concede in the 84th minute, we give away a lead, the underperformers remain so, we lose the penalty shootout. If there is one relief, it’s that we have a proper manager now.

Okay, the brighter side is that we still get to play another match which is the third place play off match. On Sunday, we’ll play AC Milan who were beaten by Sevilla. If we lose that match, Scolari will find himself in some amount of pressure even before the season starts. It’s a bad bad bad bad world.