Chelsea
Congratulations Monsieur Wenger
Alex celebrates
By Gary Watton
August 3 2015
24 hours after Chelsea Ladies defeated Notts County by a solitary goal at Wembley to lift the FA Cup for the first time in their history, the 'gents' lost by the same score against their bitter rivals, Arsenil. Arsene Wenger was long overdue a triumph against his nice friend, Jose Mourinho - and so it came to pass. Monsieur W marked the happy occasion by twice avoiding a handshake with his Portuguese chum. Perhaps he didn't want to be too triumphalist, or was he just being characteristically snooty? Answers on a postcard!
Anyhow, if you're going to lose to the Arsenic, you might as well choose the non-event of the Community Shield. I certainly don't begrudge the Arsenic their hard-fought success. In fact, they basically poached several pages out of the Chelsea manual by firstly getting themselves snuck in front and then withstanding pressure with a display of resolute defending. Now where have we seen that before? I guess that imitation is indeed a form of flattery. Worryingly for toothless Chelsea is that if Arsenic maintain this same approach of absorbing pressure against their various title rivals, then they might actually re-discover the habit of winning against the top teams in the league and thereby produce a prolonged challenge for the Premiership. They are of course assisted by Abramovich's generous donation of Petr Cech. Mind you, he was still overshadowed by Courtois yesterday, as young Thibaut was arguably Chelsea's best player. The Belgian maestro could do little about Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain's fine first-half strike but he proved more than equal in the second half to a number of dangerous counter attacks, when Chelsea's desire to find an equaliser left them horribly exposed a few times.
The Blues did arise from their slumber in the second 45 minutes, but for all of the trickery of Hazard, no goal was forthcoming. Falcao cannot be blamed. It was instead that muppet Ramires who spurned our best chances. Fabregas did his best to be creative, but I worry that Chelsea need another creative force to take the burden off Fabregas and Hazard. Yes Willian is an ever-willing accomplice and Moses could prove to be a good impact substitute (if he is content with that role), but the champions strike me as a team that might actually find goals hard to come by this season, and this is no reflection on the triumvirate of lethal strikers that we possess. Instead, the Shield outing at Wembley was proof that we struggle to unpick the locks of a solid defence. That is what concerns me most about yesterday's defeat.
Oh and Mourinho whingeing about the state of the pitch simply doesn't wash with me. Of course I never understand the logic of foolishly trying to play two matches on the same turf on consecutive days, but the Arsenic had to play on the same surface, and it didn't at least stop them from scoring or keeping a clean sheet.
Final result: Arsenal 1 CHELSEA 0 [half-time: 1-0]
(goal scorer: Oxlade-Chamberlain)
CHELSEA team: Courtois; Ivanovic; Azpilicueta; Cahill; Terry; Matic; Fabregas; Ramires; Hazard; Remy; Willian. Substitutes: Falcao; Oscar; Zouma; Moses.
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03/08/2015 13:32
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