Newspaper reports
The Guardian, Louise Taylor: “Frank Lampard is widely regarded as the complete midfielder but he was given a run for his money by an unlikely team-mate tonight. Stationed unusually deep, the imperious Nicolas Anelka inspired an important Chelsea win courtesy of a stream of sublime passes complemented by the odd incisive tackle and a deft late goal. After a deceptively bright start Sunderland ultimately floundered in the face of Anelka’s strength and attacking vision and Carlo Ancelotti’s team, initially wobbly in defence, gained a measure of revenge for their 3-0 humiliation against Steve Bruce’s players at Stamford Bridge last autumn.”
Daily Telegraph, Rob Stewart: “He may have been hundreds of miles away back in London but the Fernando Torres effect was already clearly in evidence here at the Stadium of Light. Defensively Chelsea might look shaky but in taking their tally of goals in 10 in three Premier League games, Carlo Ancelotti’s forwards provided evidence that Torres has had a galvanising effect on Stamford Bridge after being on the payroll for less than 24 hours.”
Official Chelsea FC Website: “Chelsea recorded back to back away league wins for the first time since the opening month of the season as confident attacking play avenged November’s big home loss to Sunderland. Carlo Ancelotti’s side weren’t perfect at the back in the first half and went a goal behind early on but unlike after a similar set-back at Wolves last month, this time the team had packed their shooting boots and were very good value for the three points, especially in a commanding second-half.”
The goals
4′ Bardsley 1-0
15′ Lampard (pen) 1-1
23′ Kalou 1-2
26′ Richardson 2-2
60′ Terry 2-3
90′ Anelka 2-4
Carlo’s reaction
“We played very well and created a lot of chances. It was a very good performance. With Fernando Torres here now we are more competitive. His and David Luiz’s arrival has made the rest of the squad more optimistic.
“Manchester United won tonight and are on a run but our aim is to do our best.
“We won both games away against Bolton and against Sunderland, so we have a lot of possibility to do our best until the end.
“I don’t know if it is enough to come back to fight for the title. This doesn’t depend on us. If Manchester United continue to run it is difficult to close the gap.”
If nothing else ,the transfer’s seem to have lit a fire under a few arses.
Anelka might have found a new role.Brilliant performance.Maybe his best in a blue shirt.
Went to the fridge for a refill and heard the commentator say something like an incredible miss by Kalou.Thought it was just another one of his collector items ,until I saw the replay. Can’t remember seeing one like that before!
The effort shown by the whole squad was something we haven’t seen in a few months. I was disappointed to see Ramires not in the squad, but maybe he just needed a rest. The Bison did look back to his old ways though with an all action performance and a few of his patented powerful runs forward.
Overall, we created a ton of chances and could have score 6 or 7 easily. While Drogs wasn’t great, Niccy played his best game of the season. If he had been playing every match like this, Torres would not have been necessary. He was all over the pitch and creating chances at will.
The goals we gave up were disappointing, but you can’t fault our defensive effort too much. Bosingwa was better than average (have to admit, he is getting a little better) and the second goal was just a well taken free kick, that will happen even to the best defensive squad.
Overall it was a fantastic win. It’s like the signings yesterday energized he entire squad. If we can put that type of effort in every match, staying in the top four should be no problem and if we can win the two games against ManU, anything is possible in this league.
Torres is going to add that extra quality up top that we have been lacking. With his fantastic finishing and overall quality, it’s going to be fascinating run to the end of the season. Luiz should fit well and I can see him being a better more athletic version of Riccy, which will solidify the back line and allow us to attack from the back.
Great couple days to be a fan of this Chelsea squad. KTBFFH.
Great attacking performance….Maybe back to our best?
Nic was brilliant, and tore them apart, almost at will.
Kalou played well and his goal was taken wonderfully…..But we all know, it tends to be when he thinks about things that trouble sets in.
Frank was back to being the Frank we all know, Aand JT grabbed the game by the scruff of the neck for the goal.
Funniest part of the night though was Jose Bosingwa’s 10 minute walk to be substituted….. Really riled them up perfectly, and then we went straight up the other end for the fourth goal.
Well done lads……. But let’s be honest….It’s about f*ckin time.
Superb piece by Martin Samuel.
http://tinyurl.com/62n96wq
Ah, the joys of watching 60 minutes-ish of highlights on Sky’s Football First, having avoided hearing the result beforehand!
Their full coverage of our early defensive wobbles and comedy goals conceded left me feeling for most of the second half it was only a matter of time before Sunderland would make it 3-3 [why else would Sky have made it their main game when the Mancs and Gooners were both playing too, I thought].
However, looking at the match stats on the Beeb’s report today I see, apart from their goals, they only had 2 efforts at goal [and only 1 on target] in the rest of the game compared to our double figures on target and 67% possession.
What was clear was that even with 9 of the same starters from just three days earlier we’d rediscovered how to play with pace and attacking intent throughout.
I have to agree with Habs’ comment at the end of the previous blog that if Carlo wants to be bold and start Torres on Sunday, The Drog is the player who should be making way on last night’s performances. He won’t do that though, will he?
I think the revelation is that Carlo has only just spotted that we have a truly creative midfielder who can play left or right or through the middle and will score goals.
Step forward Nico!
So a midfield diamond with Nico at the tip just behind Drogs/Torres, certainly gets your juices flowing.
And oh… what an absolute sublime finish from Kalou last night!
Yes but I wish he’d hit a tiny bit harder so I didn’t have to suffer the anguish of “will it won’t it reach the goal or is it isn’t it on target”
Last year it was the presence of a divot this year it’s the absence of a divot.
One has to raise one’s hat to the groundsmen really. At this stage of the season one would have expected a divot to divert it around the post at the last moment.
Wasn’t it a helpful divot last year at Portsmouth or somewhere that set us on the final push.
I believe someone who has an appreciation of, interest in or liking for divots is a divotee………
Ah thank you, that is my coat.
Although a slight mispelling of devotee so you just missed the target. Talking of Kalou …
great performance…Anelka seems motivated by the competition…something that seemed impossible couple of years ago…Motivated Anelka .We played great, perfect, everything was in check..we conceded, but we scored. Attacking football.
anyway…on Torres saga…I don’t understand Liverpool supporters a lot. He stayed there for four season, didn’t win a thing and despite number of clubs being interested in him, stayed until Rafa stayed. Now that Rafa has left…why stay? Roy Hodgson? Kenny Daglish? Trophies? Table position? GAME?! OKay History. Thats the only thing Liverpool has left. I never thought I’d say this…but it wasn’t Rafa’s fault. Never.
They’ve bought Joe cOle who could be considered something of a fan favourite…not in a way drogba, lampard, terry are…but yeah, we liked him, we forgave his inconsistency and number of injuries. He was English, spoke of his love of the club on number of opportunities and then he left for Liverpool. Did we burn his shirt? NO. Yes , TOrres is better player than Joe cOle and was more important to Liverpool than Joe was to us …but thats the thing.He is a better player than JC…thats why Cole is playing for Liverpool and Torres is playing for us :).
Lampard was also perfect btw. How many times did we hit the crossbar?!
Keep The Blue Flag Fly HIgh 🙂
Certainly looked impressive from the highlights. Do feel we’re too far off the pace in the league now, but you never know. At least we look as though we might be able to take advantage of any slip-ups.
We note that Arsene has been pressing his nose against our drawing room window again. All very tedious.
Only saw highlights, and besides our defensive slips we looked good.
Other news: apparently we put in another bid for Lukaku, which was rejected.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1352813/Chelsea-bid-25m-rated-Romelu-Lukaku-rejected-Anderlecht.html
I don’t know what to make of the Torres and Luiz signings, and I don’t think anyone does yet. Terry said the right things today to the press, and I would hope not too many egos are bruised when the team is 10 points off the leaders. But more players means more rotation and rest (funny how we are all in favor of Carlo’s rotation policy, where Pool supporters vilified Rafa for it). I haven’t looked at results this year, but last year we would invariably have a draw or a loss when we played a third game in 7 days. More players means fresher legs. Everyone will get playing time.
As for formations, we’ll just have to see what happens. Not everyone needs to be stuffed in- we will be rotating. But our attacking options are quite flexible. The limitations are that Kalou should play more centrally, and Malouda needs to play left wing. But it is very much a mix-and-match otherwise, and as we saw Nico has a substantial bag of tricks.
In the meantime, I’ll take 4-2 wins from here on out. We can only hope Man U find a banana peel.
Normal order almost restored then. We can go third if we win the game in hand we have on Citeh, and should be able to take second when this seasons wheels fall of this seasons title challenging Arsenal bandwagon.
Wenger does sound a tad jealous in his comments about us being hypocrites. Which is quite, umm what’s the word, hypocritical in itself. He’d better not read the latest story on the Grauniad site then, as it indicates more spending from us in the summer. There will be an audible ‘pop’ from the Emirates soon when his head finally explodes.
Also, bravo Studge tonight. Get amongst the goals boy and give us a reason to give you a chance.
I’m looking forward to Sunday more than before, though with slight trepidation now Suarez has opened his account and, more likely, if Joe Cole surprises everyone and has one good game for the Reds, you know it’ll be Sunday. If he gets on the pitch…
Aye, well done Dan up at Notlob. Shockingly already written off by a section of the very impatient brigade, but looks to have plenty in his locker and just needs some games under his belt. Hope to see him back and firing next season.
This did amuse me – all too often footballers are unfairly written off as being a bunch of thickos, but every now and again a story comes along that feeds the stereotype and for good reason. One can only imagine what ‘Arry said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/feb/03/tottenham-hotspur-ledley-king
Doh!
And I suppose we should wish Neville, G. a happy retirement. If only for his near fanatical and lifelong dedication to scouser baiting.
To be fair to Ledley he was probably thinking he wouldn’t need his passport again because Spurs won’t be in Europe much longer.
Arf arf…
On a European note (near seamless link there, Mark…), this could be interesting if the decision is upheld:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-03/premier-league-may-lose-bid-to-limit-pubs-showing-english-soccer-matches.html
Pleased to see him get on the scoresheet, though not sure why he was so grateful in post-match interview at getting 23 minutes as a sub for Bolton when he’s had a fair number of those kind of appearances for us when fit. Owen Coyle has made the right kind of noises, but is he going to start him regularly ahead of Davies and Elmander?
What is clear is that all our youngsters here and on loan are going to be reading from now till the summer articles like the ones in The Grauniad and Indie today, listing long catalogues of Roman’s alleged spending spree targets part II, which have again been given much greater credence by the last week.
Will they take that as a spur to do better and force their way into consideration or give up and start looking for new clubs?
The only thing that worries me about LUiz coming is that when Alex is back and fit, we will have 4 main centre halfs in JT, Alex, Branners and Luiz and then Bruma.
Now I can see Branners being pushed out to right back and any two from three for the middle. Yet I recall reading somewhere earlier in the season that Branners was not a happy bunny being played ‘out of position’ at RB