Chelsea Blip-O-Meter Reading
71-1 = 70 points
Chelsea Blip-O-Meter reading: 9.9
Well there were some positives to be taken from the Liverpool game: we managed to finish two league games in a row with eleven players. Now there’s an achievement, for a start.
Notwithstanding that accomplishment, this is a fully fledged blip, with the needle going, and staying, in the red zone.
Liverpool is not a very good football team. But we lost to them.
That’s four defeats in twelve games. We’ve used up our season’s entire ration and it’s still November. More worrying still is it’s three defeats in four games. That’s relegation form. And we’ve got Newcastle, Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspurs queuing up after Wolves for the opportunity to put the boot in even farther. Frankly at the moment I’d hazard a guess that Fulham and Villa are looking forward to playing us.
On that basis a projected 70-points is looking rather on the optimistic side at the moment. We easily could be staring at about 60-65 before we play Fulham if we don’t buck our ideas up.
60-65 means No Champions League; quite possibly no Europa Also-rans League (unless a top four side does a double or two).
It’s hardly going to help us recruit the new players that we undoubtedly need.
Modric must be thinking that he dodged a bullet
There goes the business model.
Nothing has changed from the start of the season: Put some decent players on the pitch and the multiple chances we offer our opponents every game must come back to haunt us.
Who is at fault?
Cech for rolling a hospital pass out to Obi?
Obi for being unable to offload the ball wide quickly enough when he knew he was in trouble?
Or a brains trust that appears to have instilled a short-ball-from-goalkeeper-to-back-tracking-central-midfielder-after-the-centre-backs-have-split-wide-towards-each-flank routine?
Substitution One: Obi off and Sturridge on. Nice one. Goal
Sub Two just had to be Drogba off for Torres.
(Bear in mind I had the sound off as it was 4:00am).
I see Torres warming up on the touchline at about 55 minutes.
Thinks: Nota Bene Ancelotti, that’s the way to do it. I can imagine just watching him warm up would start to play on the Scouse defenders’ minds.
And then he sits down again.
Up again at about 65 mins – Here we go!
Sits down again.
75 minutes – this must be it! You’ve got to give a guy at least 15-20 minutes (with injury time). Holey Komoley if we didn’t wait until he had about 10 minutes left before we made any switch.
That’s just not going to do anybody any good.
Now Glen Johnson always has been a highly suspect defender. When he played for us I was of the opinion that he would be better used as a wide midfielder. Dodgy as he was in his own penalty area he always demonstrated a composure superior to that of many forwards inside the other team’s danger zone.
So we targeted him. And gave him quite a roasting.
He must have been itching to get forward but Johnson demonstrated admirable restraint and stuck to what, for a while at the start of the second half, looked to be a thankless task involving ritual public humiliation.
And then we offer them a gilt-edged chance down our left side.
We were lucky Kuyt missed his sitter.
Did we learn?
Did we heck?
We then offered even more room down that side
| Match | Available | 11/12 | GF | GA | GD | 10/11 | GF | GA | GD | Par | PtsYTD | GFYTD | GAYTD | GDYTD |
| Stoke (a) | 2 | 0-0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1-1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | = | = | -1 | -1 | = |
| WBA (h) | 2-1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 6-0 | 7 | 1 | 6 | = | = | -5 | = | -5 | |
| Norwich (Blackpool) (h) | 3-1 | 5 | 2 | 3 | 4-0 | 11 | 1 | 10 | = | = | -6 | +1 | -7 | |
| Sunderland (a) | 2-1 | 7 | 3 | 4 | 4-2 | 15 | 3 | 12 | = | = | -8 | = | -8 | |
| Man Utd (a) | 3 | 1-3 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 1-2 | 16 | 5 | 11 | = | = | -8 | +1 | -9 |
| Swansea (West Ham) (h) | 4-1 | 12 | 7 | 5 | 3-0 | 19 | 5 | 14 | = | = | -7 | +2 | -9 | |
| Bolton (a) | 5-1 | 17 | 8 | 9 | 4-0 | 23 | 5 | 18 | = | = | -6 | +3 | -9 | |
| Everton (h) | 2 | 3-1 | 20 | 9 | 11 | 1-1 | 24 | 6 | 18 | +2 | +2 | -4 | +3 | -7 |
| QPR (Birmingham) (a) | 3 | 0-1 | 20 | 10 | 10 | 0-1 | 24 | 7 | 17 | = | +2 | -4 | +3 | -7 |
| Arsenal (h) | 3-5 | 23 | 15 | 8 | 2-0 | 26 | 7 | 19 | -3 | -1 | -3 | +8 | -11 | |
| Blackburn (a) | 1-0 | 24 | 15 | 9 | 2-1 | 28 | 8 | 20 | = | -1 | -4 | +7 | -11 | |
| Liverpool (h) | 3 | 1-2 | 25 | 17 | 8 | 0-1 | 28 | 9 | 19 | = | -1 | -3 | +8 | -11 |
| Wolves (h) | 2-0 | 30 | 9 | 21 | ||||||||||
| Newcastle (a) | 2 | 1-1 | 31 | 10 | 21 | |||||||||
| ManCity (h) | 2-0 | 33 | 10 | 23 | ||||||||||
| Wigan (a) | 6-0 | 39 | 10 | 29 | ||||||||||
| Tottenham (a) | 2 | 1-1 | 40 | 11 | 29 | |||||||||
| Fulham (h) | 1-0 | 41 | 11 | 30 |
Posted by Steve Symmons