Saturday, August 21, 2010

Didier Drogba and Chelsea put West Brom to the sword

When you have scored 103 goals and set a scoring record in your last season, it is generosity beyond the call of duty for your first opponents of this term to be doling out gifts. Scott Carson continued the fine traditions of post-modern England goalkeepers by panicking and spilling with all the grace of a Laurel and Hardy sketch. The season was only five minutes old and Chelsea were back in the old routine. The goal machine clicked back into gear.

Carlo Ancelotti wants his team to target a quadruple, and it spoke volumes for their capacity to focus that they cruised to a high-scoring victory and still had two or three gears in reserve. They were 3-0 up inside an hour without breaking sweat. Five up with more than 20 minutes to go. Didier Drogba helped himself to a hat-trick and two of the regular scorers, Frank Lampard and Florent Malouda, slipped back into the groove.

Ancelotti suggested it was less of a sign to the rest of the league than it was to the Chelsea squad themselves. "We had a difficult pre-season so it was a message to us. We did our job. Nothing special," noted the Italian master of understatement, apparently oblivious to the fact it is not every season that a team wins 6-0 on day one.

World Cup? What World Cup? For the likes of Drogba, Lampard and Malouda, all of whom endured grim disappointment of one kind or another in South Africa, the bad memories are blotted out by a return to winning ways, to cheerful supporters, to a much-loved coach and a style that they love and that loves them.

For Roberto Di Matteo, returning to his old stamping ground, it was frustrating to make his debut as a Premier League manager by watching his team do themselves no favours with slack defending. It took a mere five minutes for Chelsea to carry on where they left off, with a hell of a nose for sniffing out a goal. After Malouda had been tripped on the cusp of the area, Drogba sized up the free-kick in his white and luminous orange boots. He floated his set-piece ball over the wall and straight enough at the goalkeeper, but Carson looked shell- shocked as he parried meekly into the path of Mikel John Obi. A dinked pass invited Malouda to snaffle the season's opener for his club.

Six minutes before the break, Carson was again under the cosh from a free kick. This time, Lampard crashed the ball straight through the wall, he threw his hands in front of his face to block, and Malouda was first to the rebound. He headed over. Just before half-time, Drogba hovered over another dead ball, and the Chelsea fans in the Shed End started chanting "dodgy keeper".

There was not a huge amount Carson could do, however, as the wall crumbled. The shot slithered through a gap. Drogba celebrated.

West Brom could hardly have spent half-time talking about anything other than damage limitation. But Chelsea were able to puncture them again 10 minutes into the second half. Another set-piece – this time a corner – unnerved the West Brom rearguard. Although John Terry's glancing header was shuffled off the line by Youssouf Mulumbu, Anelka helped to scramble the ball to Drogba, who finished like all hungry strikers should. "The first three goals were bad," said Di Matteo. "We made mistakes at set pieces and we'll have to learn very quickly and improve very quickly. It was too easy."

Lampard gave Chelsea their first goal from open play. Anelka and Ashley Cole combined down the left to tee him up, and he slotted in neatly at the near post.

Five minutes later Drogba's arms were aloft to acclaim a hat-trick. A crashing drive ricocheted off Gabriel Tamas's head and Carson was plucking the ball out of his net once more. Malouda added a sixth with a crisp finish off the post in the last minute.

And with that flourish Chelsea won on the opening day for the ninth time in succession. Ominous? Naturally. Having finished 2009-10 with an 8-0 victory, Chelsea have scored 14 in two games.

As for West Brom, they have been involved in promotion or relegation in seven of the past nine seasons. You wouldn't bet on another change of scenery come May. Although, to give it some perspective, everyone in the Premier League knows Chelsea are capable of inflicting this damage routinely.

West Brom could hardly have endured a more testing opening game back among the big boys. The fixture computer has not been generous, throwing up visits to Stamford Bridge, Anfield, the Emirates and Old Trafford, as well as a home game against top-four newcomers Tottenham, in their first eight outings.

"It doesn't get tougher than that," said Di Matteo. "It would be tough for any club, never mind a newly promoted team like us. We have a home game next Saturday and hopefully we can bounce back and get our first points. Tomorrow is another day."

Wigan Athletic 0-6 Chelsea

Like Blackpool, Chelsea probably wish they could play Wigan every week, though unlike Ian Holloway's team, the London club's supporters would soon become bored of such an arrangement. This was another six-goal mismatch for the Blues, and even if it only turned into a rout in the final minutes, the fact that Chelsea are in double figures for goals after only two matches gives the lie to the idea that there are no easy games in the Premier League. There are certainly easy starts, and they don't come much less demanding than West Brom at home followed by Wigan away.

Chelsea must have returned home wondering how on earth they managed to lose here last season. Wigan's support drifted off fearing the worst about the trip to Spurs next weekend, scene of a 9-1 mauling last season. People have been asking what is the point of Wigan Athletic, to which one of their own supporters claimed in a webchat last week that they were proud to sit at the bottom of the Premier League like an unflushable turd in a lavatory. Much more of this, one feels, and the U-bend beckons.

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"The result was painful, but you need to be realistic," Roberto Martínez said. "We were unlucky to go behind in the first half, but once we were two or three goals down against Chelsea it was too difficult mentally for us to come back. The mental side is very important, and we need to react to setbacks better. We were very naive in the second half, there were too many cheap goals. I want us to be brave without being stupid."

Martínez says he cannot wait for the transfer window to shut, though at this rate he may have trouble lasting longer at the club than Charles N'Zogbia. Yet the side taken apart by Blackpool last weekend, causing more mirth at Wigan's expense than George Formby used to manage and prompting bookmakers to offer an astonishing 15-1 on a home victory here, actually kept the champions pinned in their own half for the first half-hour. That was just about all they did, Petr Cech made three comfortable saves from Maynor Figueroa and (twice) Hugo Rodallega, but they were three more saves than Chris Kirkland needed to make. Without ever looking seriously threatening Wigan gave Chelsea a few things to think about, with Mohammed Diamé and N'Zogbia working the ball up the right wing well and James McCarthy bristling with intent in central midfield.

John Terry, booed along with Chelsea's other England players, even made a couple of mistakes while the scores were still level, though Wigan being Wigan he was allowed to get away with them. Mauro Boselli, the home side's new record signing at £6.5m from Estudiantes, was not in the game enough to exude any menace as the spearhead of the attack, and neither was McCarthy quick enough to find him when Terry gave away the ball.

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All too predictably, Wigan were left regretting this when Chelsea almost casually put a move together just past the half-hour mark and took the lead without too much trouble. Didier Drogba began the attack, before Ashley Cole combined with Frank Lampard on the left to remind the sparse Wigan crowd that booing decent players is not such a clever idea. Lampard only flicked a shot in Chris Kirkland's direction but the Wigan goalkeeper still had to dive full length to get a hand to it, and with no defenders on hand to help him out it was a simple matter for Florent Malouda to roll the loose ball over the line.

The question now was whether Wigan would retain enough self-belief to keep taking the game to Chelsea, or whether they would allow their heads to drop and suffer another heavy defeat. At the same stage last week Blackpool were three up. Unfortunately for Martínez, Chelsea needed only three second-half minutes to extend their lead and put Wigan into damage limitation mode.

Hugo Rodallega had a half-chance at the other end but could not make anything of it, and when Mikel John Obi played in Nicolas Anelka a minute later the man who blows his nose in the face of French football showed how a real finisher goes about his work, slotting the ball past Kirkland from a narrow angle.

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That was all too clearly game over, though old habits die hard and Wigan characteristically conceded a third just four minutes later. Malouda's cross from the left was turned back across goal by Drogba, a couple of defenders on the line did nothing to address the situation and Anelka was allowed to get his head to the ball. One thing Martínez must sort out, if he is to keep his job and prevent any more embarrassing scorelines, is who takes responsibility at the back. Steve Bruce made Wigan hard to beat, if occasionally hard to watch. Martínez appears to have loftier ideals, but no amount of passing and moving can overcome three- or four- goal deficits.

Wigan played some of their best football after going three down, with N'Zogbia twice denied by Alex blocks, McCarthy seeing a shot touched onto the post and Boselli being denied his first goal by a raised offside flag, though by that stage Chelsea were easing up and thinking of their next game, even if Terry was fortunate not to see a second yellow card for a sly lunge at N'Zogbia's ankle. "I have never had such a start to a season before but the mentality is different in England than Italy," Carlo Ancelotti said, perhaps a little generously. "At three goals down Wigan kept trying to win the game. The first half was tough, they made it hard for us, but maybe that cost them a lot of energy."

Chelsea on economy setting were still too much for Wigan to handle, and once Drogba's run from halfway set up a goal for Salomon Kalou, there was always the chance that more would arrive. They duly did, with the excellent Drogba making another for Kalou and Yossi Benayoun notching his first for his new club at the end. Whatever it is that Wigan are good at, it isn't damage limitation.

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'I'm a person who likes being lonely'

Chelsea's midfield dynamo is grateful to be back after walking a long and lonely road to recovery

For Michael Essien, memories of the monotony persist. Back when the English summer was sun-drenched he had rarely deviated from a set daily routine. He would arrive at Chelsea's near deserted training centre in Cobham for 10am, then gain what little variety he could by mixing and matching between exercise bikes, cross trainers, treadmills, weights and lengths of the swimming pool. The work-out, prolonged and painful, ended at 5pm with another energy sapping pigeon step taken on the road to recovery.

By early evening he would be back at home in front of the television to watch team-mates and compatriots participate in the World Cup finals, a stage that might have been his. The drudgery of life in rehabilitation might have left others numbed, the loneliness of intensive fitness work when denied the camaraderie of pre-season training affecting their state of mind, but Essien is stronger than that. "John Mikel Obi would be in doing his own work, and a couple of the reserve team players, but that was it, though it was not a problem for me," he says. "I'm the kind of person who likes to be lonely. I got my head down and focused on getting fit. To be back playing now makes the hard work well worth it."

There is a purring enthusiasm to the Ghanaian that suggests he is now intent upon making up for lost time. Essien has endured lengthy spells on the sidelines in the past two seasons, the serious injuries serving to nullify his impact. He ripped his anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee two seasons ago while playing for Ghana, damage that excluded him for more than five months and, therefore, virtually the entirety of Luiz Felipe Scolari's tenure at the club. In January, when concern had centred more on the state of a hamstring torn a month earlier, he wrecked the cartilage and meniscus in the same joint while training at the African Cup of Nations in Angola.

The loud click heard by all present that day had signalled the end of his participation in a season that yielded the club's first Premier League and FA Cup Double. He scheduled a 10-day break at the end of the season ahead of the anticipated hefty working summer and promptly succumbed to a nasty bout of tonsillitis that dragged on for a week. In that sorry context, his glee at a return to first-team football is utterly understandable.

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The midfielder, along with Mikel, played in all five of the champions' pre-season friendlies and West Bromwich Albion faced a familiar rampaging figure last Saturday in Chelsea's 6-0 opening-day win. "It was great to be back," says Essien. "There's relief there, too, of course. It was so frustrating to be back in that position, out of the team and in the treatment room, but these things happen. The knee is fine. There has been no reaction, either after training or after games. If anything, it feels stronger than before. I'm not scared to go into tackles with it. Not at all.

"I suppose I knew what to expect. I'd been injured the previous year, and I'm a strong guy mentally. I've learned to be. I just got working hard to get myself fit. There are times when it is hard, when you're on the outside, but I can honestly say that winning the Premier League last season meant as much to me as it did in my first season at the club. I still managed to enjoy the occasion with everyone, feel part of it, and was on the pitch after the Wigan game in May celebrating with everyone. The emotion was just the same as winning it that first year under José [Mourinho], when I'd played more of a part in the season. I have a medal and it means as much to me. Sure, you wish you could be out on the pitch, or going up to pick up the FA Cup, but you have to be realistic: everything was about keeping focused, getting over the injury and getting fit again."

Essien played 14 league games last season, and a meagre 11 the season before, but was still offered a contract extension this summer that should extend his stay at Stamford Bridge to a decade. Carlo Ancelotti will be rejoicing to have his midfield dynamo restored to the fold, with the 27-year-old offering him rare options. He was employed in a familiar position on the right of a narrow midfield three against West Brom, with licence to spring forward and unsettle nervous opponents. Yet he retains the ability to anchor that central trio – a role offered to Mikel last Saturday – and, unlike a more conventional Claude Makélelé clone, can still boast that explosive thrust through the middle.

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At his best, the midfielder is irrepressible, his energy infectious and driving his team-mates on. Ancelotti can use him as a lynchpin as he seeks to integrate the £18.2m Brazilian Ramires into the set-up in the weeks and months ahead. The options available to the manager appear mouthwatering. "People are saying I'm one of the new signings this year, and I am looking forward to playing more consistently after missing so much of the last two seasons," says Essien, speaking at a Barclays Spaces for Sports event. "This can be a big season. I don't think I've still got things to show Carlo Ancelotti. He has seen me play a lot, even before he was our manager, and he knows what I can do. It's not as if I have anything to prove to him. He knows I will go out there and work really hard for the team every week.

"It is an exciting time. Some players have left but Ramires has come in, a player I haven't seen much of but getting into the Brazilian team is not easy, so he must be good. I hope I can work well with him. It will be up to the manager where we all play. I've always enjoyed getting forward, pushing up-field to help us in our attacks, but I think you can still do that from a central position too. You don't have to sit deep all the time. But, wherever I play, it is joyful being in a team that's playing like this at the moment. We're scoring goals and there's freedom in our play.

"The manager asks us to get forward more often and create problems for opponents. People said he was a defensive coach at Milan, but maybe he has a different kind of player here than he had in Italy. You can see how he wants us to play every week. Teams struggle when they come to Stamford Bridge and, if we score one or two, everything seems to open up for us. We need to work hard to get into that position in the first place, but you can see what happens once we are ahead."

Chelsea have been untouchable in their most recent Premier League contests. This is a team who have plundered 47 goals in their 10 games at Stamford Bridge since the turn of the year, and 21 in their last three. There have been regular avalanches after half-time as desperate opponents seek a route back into contests. Wigan will tremble at the prospect of confronting the champions this afternoon having shipped eight to them on the final day of last season in south-west London and four on the opening afternoon to unfancied Blackpool. Ancelotti's team, though, were defeated at the DW Stadium early last season – their first loss under the Italian – and will be wary of enduring a repeat. "But that was last season, that is gone now," adds Essien. Everything about this player is forward thinking.

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THE WORLD CUP 2010 WHICH TOOK PLACE IN SOUTH AFRICA HAS ENDED, HERE’S ANOTHER OPPORTUNITY. THE ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP WILL BE STARTING THIS AUGUST

Hello pals,
The world cup has come and gone but will come alive again in Brazil in 2014. Despite unbelievable losses (from big teams), incredible wins (from small teams), unfathomable decisions by referees, and even some players leaving their camp because of rifts between them and their coaches………….. the world cup ended well and SPAIN are the world champions till 2014. Wow!
Think about this,
• The players got paid
• The coaching crew got paid
• The organizers got paid
• The countries’ FAs got paid

And the most surprising part is that even when they failed in their duties and didn’t play up to expectations, they all got whooping sums of money.

But here we are, some people fighting and some even committing suicide because of their passion- “football” yet nothing to show for it financially. Unbelievable

Let’s talk about money and football……….. it’s very necessary because it’s no use having passion for a thing when you don’t gain from it. Ha ha ha
The system I am about to introduce to you will get you hundreds of dollars. Yes, I mean it because despite all the ups and down at the just concluded world cup, I made $310 and you too can make even more money depending on how calculative you are.

“GOOD NEWS, THE ENGLISH PREMIERSHIP IS STARTING THIS AUGUST. SO THE EARLIER, THE BETTER”

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IS FIFA FAIR PLAY CODE REALLY FAIR?

“If FIFA had invoked its fair play code in the match between Uruguay and Ghana, Ghana would have been declared winner at the instance when Suarez prevented the ball from crossing the goal line and Uruguay should have been sent parking with a heavier punishment for Suarez. Ghana should not have been made to play a penalty when obviously they had scored a goal if not for that ‘hand of Esau’ which prevented the ball from crossing the goal line.”

This poser has become necessary in view of the fact that the year 2010 FIFA world cup has generated a lot of controversies than any other of such competitions in recent times. One of such controversies was the unfortunate incident that made it possible for Uruguay to advance to the semi finals at the expense of Ghana. In the final minutes of that match, Uruguay’s striker Luis Suarez cheated openly at the very last minute of extra time with a blatant and deliberate handball right on the goal line. At the end, he was given a red card but Ghana missed the resulting penalty and Uruguay eventually won the match on penalty shootout at the expense of Ghana.
The first paragraph of FIFA 10-paragraph Fair Play Code for football reads “Winning is without value if victory has been achieved unfairly or dishonestly. Cheating is easy but it brings no pleasure. Playing fair requires courage and character. It’s also more satisfying. Fair play always has its rewards even when the game is lost…………. Remember: it is only a game. And games are pointless unless played fairly”.

FACTS
• There is a difference between committing a foul against a player that is goal-bound in the box 18 and unlawfully preventing a ball from crossing the goal line
• In situations where an attacking player is unlawfully prevented from taking a goal scoring opportunity in the box18, it is fair play to award a penalty to such a team.
ARGUABLE POINTS
• The goal was as good as scored already since without that unlawful blockage by Suarez on the goal line nothing else was preventing the ball from crossing the goal line.
• Therefore, awarding a penalty kick in favor of Ghana was in bad taste since it was the ball that was prevented unlawfully from crossing the goal line and not a Ghanaian player.