I'm totally amazed that some people are saying we were "awful" etc. There was a massive under-rating of our opponents on here before the game, and it seems to me there is still an under-rating of them afterwards. I don't like them anymore than the next man, but they are (as I said before the match) a very powerful team, with squad players who we would give our right arm for. Mata wasn't playing, Mikkel is a good player, Torres on the bench, Ashley Cole on the bench, Essien etc etc.
As it was, on the day we were muscled out of it and narrowly beaten by a team which is expert at narrowly winning football matches. We hit the bar, had a stone wall penalty turned down and all in all gave a pretty good account of ourselves I thought. They haven't lost at home in the league under Mourinho, it's hardly the easiest place to eek out a result. Yes when Allen and Sakho went off injured we didn't have any big guns to come on and change things, but surely we knew that beforehand didn't we?
All the Chelsea fans I spoke to last night said that the first half was by a mile the best they've played all season. Bare in mind they had David Luiz (25 mill) and Lampard sitting in front of a well drilled and solid back four. Then they had the three playmakers, Hazard, Oscar and Willian who are all 30 million quid players in front of that (with Mata in reserve). Up top they had Eto with Torres in reserve. By contrast we've got a 16 year old kid on the bench.
To go there and give them a good game wasn't an "awful" performance by any stretch, particularly when you consider it was two days after the same players had ran Man City so close. The only thing which is "awful" is the lack of understanding of some of our fans sometimes.
I only saw the second half, and I know the first was supposed to be worse, but yeah I agree.
This was our second toughest fixture of the season, 3 days after our toughest.
Not surprisingly given our injuries/lack of depth we looked knackered. ( I thought BR might have done bit more to rest a couple of our midfielders at City - eg by playing 4-4-2, but even then tiredness was always going to be an issue in this one.)
But despite that we almost certainly would have got a draw had it not been for a total shocker from that baldie clown Webb.
By the end of the game we were still fighting for an equaliser and Chelsea, who did have fresh legs in midfield, had resorted to just desperately hacking Suarez down every time he got the ball.
As fas as I am concerned we come out of those last 2 games with our heads up, even if we didn't get any points.
The concern for me is injuries, plus the fact that the players we have left have to go again in a mere 2 days time.
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