Match reports
The Guardian, Dominic Fifield: “Those “psychological effects” to which Arsène Wenger had referred when considering the significance of this collision between the Premier League’s top two may now be afflicting his Arsenal squad rather than bolstering them. Chelsea crossed the capital to win this tie and a place in the League Cup quarter-finals with relative ease. They were more streetwise, more powerful and certainly cannier in key areas, their victory achieved with a goal in each half and plenty to spare. It all seemed ominously comfortable.”
The Independent, Sam Wallace: “Nine matches, five defeats and so the wait goes on for an Arsene Wenger team to beat one managed by Jose Mourinho. At least this season, the League Cup does not represent the only realistic hope that Arsenal have for a trophy. Wenger’s side are still top of the Premier League. They have still played some of the most exciting football in Europe this season. They were, in terms of individuals, the weaker of these two mid-week League Cup XIs before a ball was kicked. Yet even so, the result said much about the depth of Chelsea’s resources and the sheer bloody-mindedness of their manager to get a result in a tie that he has, at various points over the last few weeks, proclaimed to give up on.”
The Daily Telegraph, Henry Winter: “Jose Mourinho left with Mesut Özil’s shirt, and once again with Arsenal’s scalp. Mourinho is now undefeated in the last nine competitive meetings with Arsène Wenger and his Chelsea side progressed with little trouble to the Capital One Cup quarter-finals.”
The Official Chelsea FC Website: “Goals from Cesar Azpilicueta and Juan Mata ensure we celebrate Jose Mourinho’s 200th game as manager like so many, with a win, in the fourth round of the Capital One Cup. Our Spanish right-back struck his first Chelsea goal before the interval, capitalising on a short Carl Jenkinson back-pass to volley home from inside the box. That means we have had three new goalscorers in the space of 10 days, Azpilicueta joining Andre Schurrle and Samuel Eto’o in notching their first for the club. The lead was doubled three-quarters of the way through the match via the right boot of Mata, whose sweetly-struck shot whistled past Lukasz Fabianski for his first goal of the season. In the end, it was a fairly comfortable victory for the much-changed Blues, with our opponents offering little threat going forward. It was in this competition that Mourinho lifted his first trophy as Chelsea boss, and tonight’s victory means we are still on course to emulate that feat nine years later.”
Goals and highlights
25′ Azpilicueta 0-1
66′ Mata 0-2
Highlights
Steve Holland and Arsene Wenger’s reaction
Holland: “Jose asked when he addressed the players before tonight’s game to be given selection problems for the game this coming weekend.
“He wants headaches and he wants everyone to be playing well when given the chance, and that was the case tonight, the players responded to that.
“It has been a satisfying three days. The objective at Chelsea is always to compete in all the competitions, and given that we had to play this with only one day between the games, and it gave us no option than to use the full squad, and every player in the squad deserves great credit for their performance in the last three days.
“Arsenal and Man City will be competing for major honours this season and to win both games is particularly satisfying, and we are in a good place at the moment.”
Wenger: “I think it was a very tight game that was decided on one or two mistakes but overall we cannot play all the games with the same players, at the some stage you have to rotate. No, that’s not a regret overall – there’s a lot of positives in the game, there is as well negatives because we lost it and that we repeated a little bit giving the first goal away. In the big games you give yourselves a mountain to climb, especially when you play against a team who defends well and is good on the counter-attacks. But overall it was a game played at a lot of pace where the players put the effort in.”
Related links
- Arsenal v Chelsea: Five things we learnt from the unequal renewal of an old rivalry
- Arsenal v Chelsea: As It Happened
Nice picture!
I was struggling to get the relevance of the pic, until I discovered the name attached to it when I clicked on “save as” to find out. Very good, Nick.
Indeed, I was thinking it must be our easiest victory away v the Gooners since the year we cuffed them 4-1 near the end of the season to clinch our CL place for the following year.
And didn’t our fans do a fine job of outsinging the library on Sky’s coverage.
Speaking of our fans singing, my transfer of old videos to DVDs has reached the complete recording of the 1970 FA Cup replay. I noticed near the end during the lap of honour that the sound becomes oddly disembodied as if it might have been dubbed on afterwards.
Dear old Ken Wolstenholme makes the unlikely claim that the Leeds fans are applauding our players and the soundtrack is suddenly filled with, presumably, the Chelsea fans singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone”.
Can this be so – did we ever sing this, without adapting the lyrics to something else?
Not speaking from experience as it’s before my time, but wasn’t YNWA sung by quite a few clubs before L’pool (and Celtic) claimed it as their own? I’m sure I’ve seen debates on the subject on CFC forums in the past.
Very good picture, Nick…
It appears Utd fans were the first to sing it, Poo supporters still get slightly annoyed when it’s mentioned to them.
Ooh! I shall try it then.
But you have to remember that most Liverpool supporters have selective memories when it comes to history, so they probably erased it a long time ago.
Chelsea sang a more staccato version, with handclaps, into the late 1970s – heard it on a couple of old VHS highlights reels I once had.
Talking of VHS, I want to repurchase the old club history video that came out early 90s – I think it’s better than the centenary version.
Thanks for the info on our involvement with YNWA.
Interested to learn too that there is a Centenary DVD that had escaped me entirely until now.
I don’t doubt the old BBC history video is much better than it. The BBC one is certainly better than Forever Blue, the 1998 video that was also dubbed an “official history”, but is mainly a celebration of the 1997 FA Cup win, with a few token earlier bits thrown in.
I have a soft spot for it though, as it covers the early 90s heartache cup runs and has a few new interviews with players. Shame David Mellor was also given space to pontificate too, though.
I’m puzzled that there seems to be no market for re-issuing the old videos on DVD, rather than taking pot luck on the survival of old, fragile cassettes, horrendously prone to becoming slack and developing scratches unexpectedly [there seem to be lots of the BBC one on Amazon market for around a £5].
The movie business seems to do nicely out of re-issuing all its old product on each new home format that is developed, why not football?
Walk in the park, indeed 🙂