CHELSEA 3-3 VILLA
Parrots don’t know the half of it do they? I mean, if they think they feel sick, they should have been a blue yesterday. Talk about a bloody rollercoaster, it’s just a shame the pleasure didn’t last particularly long but that queasy feeling you have when you get off did.
As seems to be the case all too often as this season drags on, I’m lost for words to sum up our game – well not lost for words entirely, just those that’ll fit in correctly amongst expletives. As we all know though, we’re Chelsea so come rain or shine, success or failure, we have to stick with it til the bitter end – and my god was the end bitter yesterday – so here goes.
First half – dull, lacklustre, lethargic, nervy, flat, toothless – you get the general picture. Yet again, we found our arses being kicked (literally, despite the ref failing to notice half the time) but rather than fight back this time, in the first half at least, we played the victim. Hoofing balls up to an ineffectual striker, passing to the invisible man, who clearly wasn’t on his game either and bundled off the ball (if we’d made the effort to win it in the first place) – which reminds me, I missed gutless off the list.
On 22 minutes, it looked like that might change though with Malouda pulled down in the box. Ok, so technically he wasn’t pulled down, but if he’d gone down as soon as he was in a headlock as opposed to after the strangle-hold had been released, there’d have been less debate about the decision. Fortunately, this time Frank Lampard was way ahead of Drogba in the walk to the spot and slotted home to give us the lead. And then we were on top, running the opposition into the ground, too great were our warriors…..oh no wait, that was Braveheart – we were more Mel Brooks than Mel Gibson.
What we actually did was piss about for another 20-ish minutes until Michael Essien decided it was time to make an impression – unfortunately he made it on Reo-Coker in the box – and Ashley Young stepped up to put his penalty past Cech. 1-1 at the break then and suddenly the feeling we’d woke up with New Year’s day was starting to compare rather favourably with this.
And talking of hangovers, within a minute of half-time, we’d given ourselves an even bigger headache by going behind to an Emile Heskey header. I mean, do me a favour, this was Aston Villa ffs and not just your usual Aston Villa, but Houllier’s Villa sitting a point off relegation. Do we have no pride at all? Of course we do and pretty much as expected (well ok, hoped is probably a better choice of word this season), we thought it was time to restore some.
Brad Friedel had other ideas when up against chances from Lampard and Malouda, but Drogba somehow managed to bundle in an equaliser and unbelievably (given the way we’re playing), as we inched ever closer to 90 minutes, John Terry cracked in our third. If winning against Bolton felt like a cup final, then for those few rapturous seconds yesterday, this was verging on Champions League.
Unfortunately, we had 5 minutes of added time to get through and with our players seemingly forgetting that and who gets to call offside, Ciaran Clark took full advantage of their recreation of a scene straight out of Madame Tussauds, to put past a static Petr Cech. Again, words fail me.
Overall then, utter rubbish. Yes, we finally managed to show a bit of fight but only after we’d gone behind to a pretty poor Villa side and actually, what was the bloody point if we couldn’t keep our heads for the last five minutes? Sort it out Chelsea.
TEAMS
CHELSEA: Cech, Ferreria (Bosingwa 56), Bruma, Terry, Cole, Ramires (Kalou 72), Essien, Lampard, Anelka (Sturridge 78), Drogba, Malouda.
VILLA: Friedel, Cuellar, Collins, Dunne, Clark, Downing, Reo-Coker, Petrov, Agbonlahor (Albrighton 84), Young, Heskey.
GOALS
CHELSEA: Lampard (pen 22), Drogba 83, Terry 89
VILLA: Young (pen 40), Heskey 46, Clark 90
Blue is the colour
