Just when we expected Chelsea to dispatch Everton and take the top spot, we had to witness one of the most tame Chelsea displays of the season. We had 1 shot on goal all match. Does anyone know any other match where we had just 1 shot or none? That was against the team that had the worst home record this season. That was against the team that had no recognised striker in their 18-man squad. I’m afraid I need to say that it just keeps getting worse by the day!

The first half went just as expected. Scolari mysteriously kept Drogba on the bench again. That really defies logic. No manager would say they can’t play Drogba and Anelka together. Scolari needs to explain this better. His 4-1-4-1 is fully found out and to play this formation every single match, while we have better options, does not look intelligent at all. First half, we did not create one good chance except a deflected shot by Ashley Cole. We had the ball, we had 5 midfielders on the pitch but still we couldn’t produce one decent chance. I don’t even remember if I saw their goalkeeper. We’re becoming boring, boring Chelsea.

John Terry compounded the problem with a reckless, mistimed and unnecessary tackle. An experienced player like Terry, who is the captain of the team, who should know the importance of winning this match, should not have gone for that pointless tackle. What was he doing up there with that lunge? There was simply no need for it. If it was Mancienne doing that, he’d get fined by the club. The red card is not even a good reason for this bad performance. May be we could still have ended the game 0-0.

From a high flying start to the season, we now seem to have no clue of how to get a shot on goal, leave alone scoring a goal. There seems to be a sad struggle to create a decent chance. As always, an away draw close to Christmas should be an okay result but the manner in which we played is what pissed me off. Certainly this state cannot be because we couldn’t sign Robinho or becauce we don’t have dribbling playmakers. This is sheer underperformance. We don’t play as a team. We can’t string four or five straight common sense passes. Why is that every third pass has to be a killer pass? We need to play with much more pragmatism.

I thought it was quite easy to motivate the staff for these type of matches. We weren’t really pushing for a win. I don’t think we came in with an intention of drawing. As the match progressed, there was no urgency, there was no intent to go gung ho for the win. Scolari was quite defensive in his approach. He brought on Ivanovic for Joe Cole and Drogba for Anelka. He should have retained both Anelka and Drogba and should have brought on Ivanovic for Deco. Drogba can do well in any formation but we know his best came out when he was played in a 4-4-2. While we had all 11 men on the pitch, Anelka was invisible and when we were 10 men, Drogba had to be the lone striker.

As we got closer, I was thinking about that match at Goodison park a couple of seasons back. That was just wishful thinking. Here tonight we were playing so poorly that I didn’t where would a goal come from. I was just hoping that we would nick one in the last few minutes. To my shock, I saw Wayne Bridge coming in for Deco in the 87th minute. With about 5 minutes to go, with the score being 0-0, with a chance of topping the table, why would you go defensive? Couldn’t we have pushed for just another 5 minutes? I don’t remember Chelsea playing like this. We have always attacked relentlessly till the final whistle unless we are already leading. That was an unbelievable tactic by Scolari. Then I saw Chelsea wasting time. At 0-0 with a few minutes to go, Chelsea wilfully wasting time?!!

The team always reflects the manager and his ideologies, beliefs and attitude. If Scolari had shown the right intent of even possibly taking out a defender for an attacker, the message is delivered clearly to our team as well as the opposition. I think he let the players down there. I’m thinking of that match between Everton and Aston Villa where Everton scored with just 1 minute to which Aston Villa responded by scoring with 20 seconds to go. We did not even give ourselves a chance go for something like that.

Unfortunately, Scolari does not seem to have the character or the courage to go gung-ho and claim victories from the jaws of draws or defeats. He does not challenge enough. He does not think out of the box. He does not drive the team enough. His methods and styles are very one-dimensional. Teams have very well understood how to play Chelsea. Unless Scolari works on this pretty soon, we should be prepared for more such upsets.

You can say that we’re still second in the league. But to be honest, it’s not a league of 20 teams that we are contesting in. It’s just a league of four. If we are second, that means we have just two teams below us. And there is no praises for being third or fourth out of four teams. If Man Utd win their games on hand, we’ll be on even points with Man Utd. We’re just 4 points above Aston Villa. So, being second is not as sexy as it sounds. We’re always only a couple of matches away from finding ourselves in fourth place.

In the middle of some poor home form, the one thing that kept the cheer was the away form. The home matches disease seems to be contagious. We have West Brom on boxing day at Stamford Bridge and then Fulham away on Sunday. Will we get 6 points from these two matches? Well, I’m not sure and I’m only talking about West Brom and Fulham. Not a very good sign!