Well, we’d expected a few changes to the side for this game – although to be honest, ten seemed a little risky against a side we only scraped a 1-0 over in our last meeting.
Obviously now we’re through to the next round, we can afford to smile at Ancelotti’s bottle – although given the outcome for Scolari against Burnley last season when he went for wholesale changes, you can’t help thinking it could’ve been a close call for the new Chelsea boss.
Ancelotti picked only Florent Malouda from the weekend’s line-up, but realistically, even with youngsters like Borini and Hutchinson alongside long-term absentees Paulo Ferreira, Joe Cole and new signing Yuri Zhirkov, you’d have to say we still had a better starting eleven than our opponents . And with the added bonus of players like Terry, Lampard, Ashley Cole and Essien on the bench just in case it went pear-shaped, it should all have been a pretty relaxed affair really. Except this is Chelsea and we don’t tend to do ‘relaxed’, so we went for a goal less first half for starters, a fairly early goal in the second, and a bit of nail-biting for dessert.
Not that we didn’t have our chances because we kicked off fairly positively, with Malouda and Kalou denied by the keeper. The trouble was though, as the first-half progressed, so did QPR and it just didn’t feel very comfortable at the break. I suppose we’ve been spoiled by a starting eleven looking as solid as they usually do – whether we’re winning or not – and if we weren’t going to go in a goal up, I at least wanted us to look like we were on top of the game but it was all a bit dull and I wasn’t convinced.
Ancelotti obviously wasn’t convinced either because he brought on Frank Lampard for Malouda after the break to shake things up a bit and in the 52nd minute we got ourselves a marginal cushion with Joe Cole providing the assist for Salomon Kalou. QPR wanted to make a game of it though and it wasn’t until we brought on Ashley Cole and then Terry towards the end, that we looked more like our old comfortable selves again.
So, not the most riveting game we’ll see all season but another win, a good first 90 minutes back for Joe Cole who wore the captain’s armband on his return, just over an hour out of Yuri Zhirkov at last, and chances for a couple of our younger players. QPR can concentrate their efforts on Flavio Briatore again now they haven’t got to think about the possibility of a cup run and as for us, we can all concentrate on re-growing our fingernails ready for the next round!
TEAM
CHELSEA – Hilario, Ferreira, Ivanovic, Hutchinson (Terry,77), Zhirkov (A.Cole,68), Mikel, Belletti, Malouda (Lampard,46), J.Cole, Kalou, Borini
Unused Subs – Turnbull, Essien, Matic, Bruma
Chelsea Scorer – Kalou (52)
Blue is the colour
