Brief: Chelsea 3 – Aston Villa 3
“Boring, Boring Chelsea!”
From the brink of another dismal showing and another home loss, to the edge of ecstasy and the greatest comeback of all time (well nearly but you get my drift!)……to total disappointment after letting Villa back into it for a draw in injury time.
For the neutrals this game had everything, Aston Villa came to The Bridge with nearly as bad a record as us so, I guess, a draw was on the cards. The tactics of the away side were to dig at us and cause as much frustration by hacking away and slowing down the play whenever possible.
The seven yellow cards that Aston Villa collected were testimony to this, and they were lucky to finish the game with a full side. If Houllier is to set his stall out like this for the rest of the season, then I can’t see them lasting the pace and they could be in the bottom three fighting off relegation.
So another two points dropped and we now sit in fifth place behind Spurts! When was the last time that happened!? (answers on a comment below pls!)
The games come thick and fast at this time of the year and next up is Wolves away, another tricky fixture and you can be sure they will be fighting just as hard looking for home points to help them get off the bottom of the table.
“Win or Lose – Up the Blues”
Game stats from the BBC Website:
Chelsea 3-3 Aston Villa
(HT 1-1)
Lampard (pen) 23
Drogba 84
Terry 89
Young (pen) 41
Heskey 47
Clark 90+1
Chelsea
01 Cech
03 A Cole
19 Ferreira (Bosingwa 57)
26 Terry – yellow card
43 Bruma
05 Essien
07 Ramires – yellow card (Kalou 72)
08 Lampard
15 Malouda
11 Drogba
39 Anelka (Sturridge 78)
Substitutes
22 Turnbull, 17 Bosingwa, 38 Van Aanholt, 46 McEachran, 52 Mellis, 21 Kalou, 23 Sturridge
Aston Villa
01 Friedel – yellow card
05 Dunne
21 Clark – yellow card
24 Cuellar
29 Collins – yellow card
06 Downing
07 Young
19 Petrov – yellow card
20 Reo-Coker – yellow card
11 Agbonlahor – yellow card (Albrighton 85)
18 Heskey – yellow card
Substitutes
33 Marshall, 30 Lichaj, 08 Pires, 12 Albrighton, 25 Bannan, 31 Herd, 14 Delfouneso
Ref: Lee Mason
Att: 41,222
the problem of not be able to hold on to the lead at 3to 2 baffles me is it overcelebration of the third goal.chelsea could have countered the agresiveness of aston villa early enough that brought the second and third goal against them.remaining 4 minutes all could have come back to defend the lead.they should all calm down and stop this nervousness now.
The saddest thing for me is to watch the decline of John Terry. To watch him refuse to mark anyone at free kicks and corners and watch as the man he should be marking scores makes me so angry. He then stands there and has a go at his other defenders. He has this extraordinary tactic of running into the goal behind Cech rather than mark anyone. I have never seen a defender so shot away. Thankfully Drogba had a word with him because the manager seems to be incapable of sorting him out. He was at fault for 2 goals against Arsenal and went missing for 2 yesterday.