Right, I’ll keep this brief because to be honest I’m losing the will to live lately.
For Ian Wright’s benefit I’ll say ‘deary me fellows, what seems to be occurring on the pitch doesn’t appear sufficient to win us chaps a trophy but we love you anyway’. For everyone else however, I’ll say ‘fuck me, I think it’s fair to say we won’t be at the top of the table much longer playing like that.’
Don’t get me wrong, we certainly dominated enough – and so we should considering who we were playing – we just didn’t do enough with the possession we had. Pompey struggled to get out of their own half for much of the first 45 and it was only a matter of time before we scored, even if far too many missed opportunities meant we had to wait a while.
The breakthrough eventually came from Nicolas Anelka in the 23rd minute though with an Alex assist but the struggle to take our chances continued, so the one goal was all we had to show for a dominant first half and we were to pay for that just five minutes into the second half. A needlessly given away free-kick from John Terry – yes, another bloody set-piece disaster – came off Ashley Cole for Piquionne to bang in.
And whilst I wouldn’t say we looked particularly vulnerable, because we dealt with any counter-attacking adequately enough, we didn’t exactly set about putting the game to bed either. Here we were, this top of the table side that’d looked so strong a few weeks ago, and we were struggling to carve out anything of substance against Avram Grant’s bottom of the table side – not entirely convincing really.
We picked up a bit as the whistle got ever closer but still looked far too close to another draw for comfort – and that’s exactly what we would have got if Ivanovic hadn’t been fouled in time added on by Marc Wilson. Fortunately, the penalty gave Lampard the opportunity to get back to doing what he does so well, and we managed to get away with all three points.
It wasn’t pretty, it wasn’t convincing but it was a win.
Hallelujah.
TEAMS
CHELSEA: Cech, Terry, Ivanovic, Alex, A Cole, Ballack, Lampard, Mikel (Malouda, 64), Deco (J Cole, 58), Kalou (Borini, 72), Anelka
Unused subs: Hilario, Ferreira, Carvalho, Zhirkov
PORTSMOUTH: Begovic, Ben-Haim, Mokoena (Utaka, 85), Finnan, Hreidarsson, O’Hara, Boateng, Mullins, Diop (Hughes, 60), Wilson, Piquionne (Dindane, 71)
Unused subs: Ashdown, Vanden Borre, Belhadj, Yebda
Blue is the colour
