Chelsea 2 – 0 Liverpool

I asked a friend who watched the game to sum it up in one sentence. Here’s his somewhat festive response:

“You struggled to score against a 10-man Liverpool reserve side; your attack is as toothless as Shane MacGowan.”

He also said something about Rafael Benitez being deluded. Nothing gets past him.

Nobody was interested in doing a report so use the comments to discuss what was good and bad about the game. I’ve only seen the goals and sending off. A red card tackle if ever I saw one.

Match reports

Daily Telegraph, Henry Winter: “Blue was the colour, with strikes from Frank Lampard and Andrei Shevchenko deservedly sweeping Chelsea into the semi-finals of the Carling Cup, but red was the colour for Peter Crouch, deservedly sent off for a two-footed lunge at John Obi Mikel.”

The Independent, Sam Wallace: “The Carling Cup or the Snarling Cup? Even the mild-mannered Peter Crouch lost his temper last night to become the third player in English football’s angriest competition to be dismissed in the space of two days before Rafael Benitez followed up with a broadside at the referee Martin Atkinson.”

The Times, Matt Hughes: “For all the talk of change under Avram Grant at Stamford Bridge, most things have stayed the same. As is customary at this time of year, Chelsea ground their way into the Carling Cup semi-finals – for the third time in four seasons. They progressed courtesy of a hard-fought win in a spiteful match typical of the enmity that exists between the teams.”

The Guardian, David Hytner: “There is rarely much between these rivals and even with a weakened Liverpool line-up, it appeared that something abnormal, something freakish perhaps, would be required to prise them apart. So it proved. Lampard’s goal was the decisive moment and it went in with the help of a cruel deflection off Jamie Carragher.”

The goals

59′ Lampard 1-0
60′ Crouch (red card)
90′ Shevchenko 2-0

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