Well, it was a close call and a long time coming but we finally got ourselves 3 points.
Ancelotti made a few changes to the side that scraped a draw against Birmingham Saturday, notably, bringing in Yuri Zhirkov and dropping Ashley Cole, and replacing Ivanovic with Ferreira and, watched by Jose Mourinho, we set about making life difficult for ourselves. Well, it’s not exactly making it easy for yourself going a goal down inside five minutes is it? But that’s what we managed to do.
The usual sloppy defending saw Zoltan Gera take advantage just over 4 minutes in and for long periods, it didn’t look as if we had any idea how to respond. Fortunately the crowd were on hand to cheer the lads on. Oh no wait, that should be ‘jeer’. Honestly, what a bloody disgrace. None of us are happy with our current form and results but what a bloody joke, booing your own players.
Yes, we were struggling to find a way through the Fulham defence but a goal down or not, we were all over them. Seriously, is it any wonder the players started to lack faith in themselves when they’re top of the table and being booed before half-time? It’s not the first bloody time we’ve been a goal down and it won’t be the last – get a grip.
Anyway, second half and with the exception Carvalho doing his best to gift Fulham a second with a nightmare backpass, we were still battering them. Ancelotti’s sense returned, seeing him replace Ferreira for Ivanovic just before switching Mikel for Sturridge. And it was the substitions that gave us the breakthrough, first with Ivanovic, whose crossing is head and shoulders better than anything Ferreira managed to pull off, with a cross that Didier Drogba happily banged in. Just minutes later, two minutes in fact, Sturridge sort of cross, sort of shot, came off Chris Smalling’s knee and we had enough luck for it to go in.
Overall, whilst at times we seemed to lose our way a bit and certainly missed the ability to be clinical, we definitely did enough to warrant the 2-1 but with Drogba, Essien, Kalou and Mikel all missing now, we’ll be needing a lot more than luck in our next few games.
TEAMS
CHELSEA: Cech, Ferreira (Ivanovic, 63), Terry, Carvalho, Zhirkov (A Cole, 83), Mikel (Sturridge, 69), Lampard, Ballack, J Cole, Drogba, Kalou.
Unused subs: Hilario, Alex, Belletti, Kakuta
FULHAM: Schwarzer, Pantsil (Etuhu, 63), Hughes, Smalling, Konchesky, Duff (Riise, 84), Murphy, Baird, Gera (A Johnson, 70), Zamora, Dempsey.
Unused subs: Zuberbuhler, Nevland, Greening, Kallio
GOALS
CHELSEA: Drogba 71, Smalling og, 73
FULHAM: Gera 4
Blue is the colour
