MAN CITY 1 – 3 CHELSEA
Well, it was billed as the ‘clash of the cash’ and the media were wetting themselves over it – to such an extent that even I allowed myself to believe that despite their poor record against us in the Premier League, things could be about to change.
My pessimism had a lot less to do with City and their new found wealth though, and more to do with Chelsea themselves. We’d lost out on the Robinho signing, Essien has just been declared injured for a substantial amount of time, and we’re in the middle of a tug-of-war for Steve Clarke. Knowing how disharmony behind the scenes has played a big part in what has been reflected on the pitch for the past year, I just expected the worst.
However, I stand completely corrected for the lack of credit I gave to the lads because the pressure going into this game was clearly all on Chelsea. City might have inherited enough money to keep the entire Premier League afloat for the foreseeable future, but they had after all only signed one player with their vast new wealth. Chelsea are regarded as the team who have already lashed out obscene amounts of money for the past five years (even if no-one’s noticed they’ve barely spent anything for the last two in comparison), and being firmly established as one of the ‘Big Four’, the challenge was to prove their worth. However, prove it they certainly did – and with some style too.
Naturally, when Robinho scored (aside from calling him a few choice words), I assumed – probably like most City fans – that we could be in trouble. Carvalho, as far as I was concerned had clearly got a touch on the ball before Jo fell over, although, as would prove to be the case for much of the game, Mark Halsey saw something completely different and awarded a free-kick. Step up the man who didn’t have a clue who he was signing for two weeks ago, add a deflection off Mikel’s head and cue John Terry and Petr Cech rowing about the outcome – after Cech had picked the ball out of net of course.
The fact that it’d come off Mikel’s head clearly passed the home crowd by, as they celebrated their new superstar. Sadly for them though, the Chelsea heads didn’t go down and City celebrations lasted no more than four minutes before Chelsea equalised through Ricardo Carvalho from a Lampard corner.
And Chelsea just pushed on from there, looking pretty comfortable and assured, and to be fair, if we’d taken all of our chances, another 6-0 against City wouldn’t have been out of the question. Malouda came desperately close, heading onto the bar, and both he and Anelka missed chances. Mikel looked comfortable in the absence of Essien and Deco again, just seems to be at the centre of everything.
That’s not to say City looked poor, SWP was lively, Stephen Ireland was making a nuisance of himself and Jo went close, although Carvalho fortunately had him covered. But it was Chelsea who grew more dominant as the game went on, the passes were coming together and with the exception of Cech, it appeared everyone was on the attack. And it was from Chelsea’s fluid passing that the second goal came courtesy of Frank Lampard. I’ll skip over the praise, because for £150,000 the game we got from him was exactly what we should get, but it was a tidy goal anyway.
Our third goal, from a lovely through ball from Joe Cole to Nicolas Anelka, should really have been the end to a good day for Chelsea, however, a perfect end wasn’t in the script it would seem, as Terry wrapped an arm around a sprinting Jo, and was duly red-carded. And whilst I’m not defending our captain, because at 3-1 up and over 40 yards out, with Carvalho for cover, he really shouldn’t be applying wrestling manoeuvres, the fact that there were two players in the vicinity (not to mention the distance from goal), meant it wasn’t a goal scoring opportunity and therefore didn’t warrant Halsey striding over, red card in hand without even giving it a thought.
Lampard wasn’t impressed about the sending off, saying “It’s disappointing – I’ve never seen a player get sent off for a professional foul with two players behind him.” Whilst Scolari, on the other hand, suggested “I would need to see it again on TV before I could really speak about it. I let the referee make decisions but I will speak to the players and the board because I don’t have any idea what happened.”
However, on the game itself, the Chelsea boss said “They started to lose but they changed the result. My players fought and they tried to win the game from the first to the last minute.”
And having predicted all doom and gloom for this one, I’m more than happy to eat humble pie and agree with him.
Blue is the colour
