United beat Chelsea with a three goal margin last weekend. And Chelsea hit back by beating United with a three-goal margin win today. Perfect revenge as long as you don’t mind that those Uniteds were Manchester and Southend respectively.

Has the normal service resumed? I don’t think so. I would say that we are not out of the jail yet. I would not call this a great performance but this was a good result. At least we’ve woken up from the nightmare. We badly needed a win. We needed goals. We needed smiles. We got all that, but not before a scare from a customary ‘cornered’ goal. Until a minute before half time, not everything was going our way. Our eternal passing game was found out by Southend too. Luckily for us, Ballack scored a beautiful goal with seconds to go before the half time whistle. Had we not scored that goal and had we finished the half at 1-0, it could have been a different story. Anyway, we’ve got the win. We have avoided the upset. Scolari has got a little breathing space. Only a little because we are now third in the league table as Man Utd beat Wigan.

Scolari did the right thing in dropping Drogba and bringing on Kalou. I hope someone has that defining conversation with Drogba. What does he want to do – stay or leave? If he stays, it should be under our terms. If he wants to leave, he should be allowed to. A Drogba playing with full of his heart is an immense asset to any team, a superb matchwinner. On the other hand, a Drogba with low morale or motivation is pretty much a liability and an unwanted influence. A decision needs to be taken on Drogba. Soon. Oh yes, Phil dropped Deco too! These little things can make a difference. I’m happy that Scolari is not too stubborn and has at last started to learn from his mistakes!

The final whistle must have been moment of relief than that of euphoria. We need to put this result in perspective. What have we done? We have taken our team of first choice players and have beaten Southend United. These are the kind of matches where if you win, you get no praise but if you lose, you’ll be battered badly. A win with a three-goal margin is what is normally expected of Chelsea when they play against a league one side. We’ve done just that, albeit in a hard way. I’m not convinced with this performance because of various reasons.

  • We are still conceding in set pieces. They had just 5 corners and they scored one. How is that Southend won every single 50/50 header while we were always late to react. Whatever happened to our aerial skills! Teams like Liverpool and Juventus are specialists in set pieces. This kind of set piece defending makes us start with a goal down right at kick off.
  • We got 16 corners but hardly troubled them. Why don’t we do something different for a change? Not even something outrageously brilliant like Man Utd tried against us. You can just try a short pass or a low cross. Something different. There was not any much variety in the way we handled all those 16 corners.
  • Our attacks are still very slow. Mind you, I’m NOT referring to the players here. Players are fast enough but the attacking movements and plays are very slow. With our over-elaboration of attacks, we make  our opponents to defend in numbers, even if they had not planned to.
  • Still our attacking play is far too predictable. When we chose to be unpredictable, Joe Cole gave that lob to Kalou who dribbled it, may be because he did not have anyone to pass it to, and then slotted it home superbly. That’s our reward when we want to be less predictable. For about an hour, we were doing our regular drills up and down.
  • We still have difficulty in breaking down deep defences. Let’s not be blinded by the scoreline. Our first goal was from the goalkeepers’s blunder. But Ballack took the goal beautifully. The second goal was when we did not play that slow short-passing style. After that goal, Southend was forced to venture out which created space for us to exploit. I’m yet to see us truly break down the defence with our movement and passing.
  • We don’t put pressure on the opponent. We still allow the opponent to play his game. Chelsea had about 80% possession today. So, to say that we did not pressurise them might sound like an absurd statement. Southend lost possession not because we won it from them. They lost possession because their passes were poor. We should start pressurising the opponents heavily, like we used to.
  • We don’t get into the punitive mood. We could have scared the hell out of Southend. We should have made them pay for forcing this replay. But we never get into this punishing mode. We are always at peace when it come to our attacks.

I have a question to Scolari. He says we don’t use 4-4-2 because he thinks this system is tough, the midfield will be weaker etc. Chelsea have played 4-4-2 very often before. In fact, Chelsea have played multiple formations before. If Scolari is so touchy about using 4-4-2, how come he does not mind the experimenting of zonal marking as against the tried and tested man marking that Chelsea players are used to? I don’t understand the logic here. I also wonder what prompted him to change this! If there is one area in Chelsea that need not be tampered with, that would be defence. Here is Phil telling players to start zone marking while not using 4-4-2 because it is tough. Strange.

There were lots of positives from this match. I’d like to highlight a couple of them. Kalou scored a crucial goal once again. Regular readers would know that I like Kalou. He can be frustrating but I’ve always thought he is good. He can be better if appropriately utilised. That piece of work that he did today was something we are unable to expect from any other Chelsea player as of today. To take that effort, one had to be confident and selfish. I’m happy for Kalou. I hope he gets more playing time, especially as a second half substitute.

And then, the other positive is that Di Santo played for 15 minutes. He couldn’t make a telling contribution but I thought he showed glimpses of what he can do. I had written before that Di Santo’s movement is much better than that of Anelka. I stand by that statement. Anelka’s movement is largely one-dimensional. He does not make intelligent runs to the exploitable space. He makes normal runs that a striker would do and use the space if it’s created in his zone. Whereas Di Santo can be cunning striker. His movements can be troublesome for the keeper. He’s got a good header too. I’m still waiting for him to start and complete 90 minutes. With Scolari’s obsession towards 4-1-4-1, the only chance for Di Santo to start is by keeping Anelka and Drogba in the bench. Di Santo can start against Ipswich but unfortunately, I don’t see that happening.

Okay, we have saved a massive embarrassment by beating them 4-1. Scolari’s job is somewhat safer for now. Stoke at Stamford Bridge this weekend could be a tough game. All the while we have been conceding from corners and free kicks. This weekend we run the risk of adding ‘throw-ins’ to our catalogue. After Stoke (it has the potential to be a tough game but I hope it’s easy), there are no more easy matches. Take a look at this list of next 10 matches: Middlesbrough (H), Liverpool (A), Hull (H), Aston Villa (A), Juventus (H), Wigan (H), Portsmouth (A), Juventus (A), Man City (H) and Tottenham (A). Hope this win has put us back on track. I think this must have brougt back some much needed confidence for the players. Scolari has not put a winning run (home + away) of more than three matches yet. Now that the voodoo is gone and confidence is back, let’s go on a winning run, shall we?