Damn. Damn. Damn. This shouldn’t have ended this way. At 3-0 up, they had their tails behind their back and had no chance of coming back at the Bridge. No matter how much the media wants to call it a comeback, I wouldn’t call it so. It was not a ‘come-back’ by Man Utd, it was a ‘brought-back’ by Howard Webb. There’s no way Man Utd could have got anything in this match without the mercy of Howard Webb. As it always happens, they got lucky to the point of being scandalous. Back in Old Trafford, we dominated the game only to see two offside goals give them a big home lead. Now here, two non-penalties giving them the draw. They always get the loooooong rope from the referees. Actually, like with Barca, I’m tired of how they win with referee’s help. Same old.

Chelsea started with an attacking line-up. It showed that we were going to take the game to Man Utd and would be looking for nothing less than a win. I must say the quality of the game was disappointing. To call this a premier league classic only undermines premier league. Neither teams were able to make any meaningful attacks. Possession was lost very very cheaply. Not many clear cut chances. Horrible refereeing. The best moments of the game were Sturridge’s trickery for the first goal, Torres’ cross and Mata’s finish for the second goal, brilliant tackles by Ivanovic and Cahill and a very smart header from Hernandez.

Yet another game where Torres creates a beautiful goal rather than scoring one. He got one good chance which he fluffed by taking too many touches before losing the ball. His current confidence level is such that he needs to be 100% clear that his shot will make it, like he’s taking a penalty. He’s not in a frame of mind to take risks which one would do while in form. At least, his cross was one of the best we’ve seen from a Chelsea player this season. And Mata’s finish was sweet. Should be up there as one of the best Chelsea goals this season. Click Here To Read The Full Article

‘Unconvincing’ is our middle name now. A nervy 1-0 win against QPR has further confirmed it. At least we’re still in the cup. There were some decent attacking moves from our side and while they were nice to see didn’t actually produce a goal for us. We needed something like a penalty and we got exactly that. Still think it was a soft penalty and you would see them not called more often. The way I see it, it’s a penalty nevertheless as Sturridge was in a position to head the ball into the goal and the push from behind (no matter how light it was) denied him.

I’m a big supporter of same treatment for events and incidents inside and outside the penalty box. It’s sometimes sickening to see the fouls during set pieces that don’t get called because they are inside the box and the referees seem to think it’s okay for such things to happen in the box. If anything the rules for the incidents inside the box should be tighter. So, this is a penalty. And for all the pushing and shoving that denies our players during set pieces, we need more such penalties to offset.

The game had a fantastic backdrop in the form of John Terry vs Anton Ferdinand racial abuse incident. There was a big aniticipation on what would happen in the handshake ritual. Will Anton and Terry shake hands or not? Will the whole QPR teams refuse to shake hands with Terry? It’s quite clear that JT’s handshake list is becoming shorter by the day. Being the captain, leader and legend, he needs to be more careful and wary of his on-pitch and off-pitch behaviour. He’s not proven guilty but being aware and careful would have saved him and the club a lot of time and effort and focus could just have been on football.

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Summary – Draw. Points dropped. Couldn’t even score. On a weekend when the Manchester clubs play the North London clubs, the last thing you want to do is to drop points and we did just that. As pundits say whether it’s a point won or two points lost will be known on Sunday. Well, if you’re looking to win the title, any draw is points lost. Since we have lowered our sights to the likes for Arsenal, Spurs and Liverpool, we could even draw a positive out of a draw with Norwich. Even if we see Manchester beating North London on Sunday, it still means we missed out on an opportunity to extend the gap.

This game also had a unique record of no fouls committed by either teams in the whole of first half. Not even one foul. That’s like FIFA 12. While this can be seen as a positive thing by some, I’d rather have some fouls committed by Chelsea and play in a way that would have the opposition commit some fouls. The way I see it, fouls are a result of an intent. If you make a number of successful tackles and commit no fouls, that I’m happy about. Lack of intent towards closing down and tackles can also result in fewer number of fouls. What’s special about this first half is that there were a number of successful tackles but either teams and still there were no fouls. Good show.

What went wrong? Same old probing with half decent efforts and bad finishing. Can’t help but think we should be creating lot more chances than we are managing to do now. We started with a 4-3-3 with Sturridge and Mata on either sides of Torres. I’m still of the opinion that we should play 4-2-3-1 and keep Sturridge on the bench and bring him on in the second half. 4-2-3-1 will allow Mata to move to the centre and have more of the ball. I know Sturridge deserves to start but he does tilt the balance of the starting eleven and hence we don’t get the best out of our starting eleven. Click Here To Read The Full Article

We still have a 100% win record in 2012. How cool is that? Three wins in three matches – Wolves, Portsmouth and now Sunderland – two of them in premier league. In just this short period, we saw teams like Spurs, Liverpool, Man City drop points. Only when we keep winning, we see how beatable other teams are and how often they could drop points. This month is a good one for us. Luckily, we have been blessed with some winnable match-ups. But that doesn’t mean we are winning any of this as easily as we should.

It’s only fair to say that we’ve been . . . lucky! Yup, luck had deserted us for a few months. In exactly those months, we chose to defend in methods unfamiliar and the result was a nervous hovering in the fourth spot. Looks like we have made some tweaks in our defending methods as we are dropping slightly deeper with the fullbacks not operating as full time wingers. And now, luck seems to be back. All these three wins this month could have ended in draws and we wouldn’t have been able to complain (yes, including the ‘massive’ 4-0 win).

See I’m quite convinced that 4-2-3-1 is the way to go. Let’s admit this – we don’t have one orthodox winger in our whole squad, not even one. And we should get Mata to get involved more and for that he should be playing in the middle behind Torres. This is one reason why I’m not quite missing Sturridge. With Sturridge in the team, we are forced to play a two striker formation or three-man forward, considering that Torres should start every match. So actually I’m quite pleased that Sturridge didn’t start

It’s no surprise that the goal was created by Mata and Torres – two of our four best players in recent times (Ramires & Sturridge being the other two). No one in Chelsea delivers dangerous crosses like Mata and crossing is not supposed to be Mata’s strong point. You’ll be surprised to know the proportion of Chelsea opportunities are created by Torres. We’d love to see him at the end of these opportunities and taking advantage of them but at least he’s been the creator for many of them.

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How about a quick round-up on football news and rumours? I used to do such round-ups before on this blog where I’d pick on the top football news and add my tuppence to them. Either I felt like doing one today or I want to start this as a feature. I’m so fickle I don’t really know which one of these and if it would stay that way! Anyway, I do consume a lot of football news and rumours and of course, have my reactions to them. What better place than this blog to capture them all?

We need to remind ourselves that the transfer window is open because there’s hardly any business. Yeah I know, the big transfers don’t happen in January. Only that Chelsea have made transfers worth £100m or more in the last three winter transfer windows. So far the big transfer news is the re-signing (resist your temptation and don’t read it ‘resigning’) of Thierry Henry with Arsenal. No doubt he’s a great premier league player. He’s also a player I love to hate. Huge respect for him but never liked him. I’m sure he will be useful at Arsenal this time around too.

But consider this: Arsenal FC have gone and installed a Theirry Henry statue in the stadium and Henry re-signs for Arsenal. So he will be walking past his statue as he comes in for another session of training. How odd is that? There is already some fears among the fans of Henry that if he fails in this stint the last memory of a spent force or a fallen giant that cut a sorry figure. I’m guessing he will do well if he has a very clear role – a role that will support and not lead the attacks.

@StupidFootball “Wow. It looks exactly as I left it!”- Thierry Henry on seeing Arsenal’s trophy cabinet.

We have also been waiting for Harry Redknapp to sign David Beckham, haven’t we? Looks like Beckham was going to PSG to unite with Ancelotti but that has died down. He’s still a free agent though. Just wondering how will Chelsea operate with someone like Beckham with that crossing and longpassing ability! Meanwhile, Ganso was rumoured with Spurs but Redknapp has quashed all that with a strange rebuttal. Harry says he doesn’t know who Ganso is! He’s quoted saying “Ganso? I have never heard of him. I don’t know him, where does he play? What position? I don’t get to Brazil much. We got Sandro from there but other than that, no”. How sad is that?

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