Duff cross, deflected towards goal off a Southampton defender, cleared off the line...almost an own goal, now a corner to Chelsea
Southampton Triple sub Omerod - OFF Delgado - ON Griffit - OFF Prutton - ON A. Svensson -ON Marsden - OFF 70th min
Chelsea hang on, barely FULL TIME Chelsea 1 - Southampton 0 Arse 3-0 winners so still 1 point behind.
Agreed. Sparta Prague on Wednesday, then Man U on Sunday. I believe for the CL, a win Wednesday puts us through, and a win combined with a Besiktas draw/loss clinches first in the group.
Yes we made hard work of that but Southampton at home are no mugs a good result for us and an extra 2 points up on last season.
Indeed. A good solid result for the lads.Nothing spectacular by any means in the way of thrust and cut play as some like call it..Rather, though, a very very good away performance.It's not always about knocking in three or four goals and looking a class act doing it.This performance should be looked at in the context of an entire (title winning?) season, and, as such should be hailed as a fine performance on the road to a team that are capable of turning anyone over on any given day.United lost here to a Beattie header at the death-we came away with three points. Nobody played bad, but , nobody really shined either.A true team performance.I must say i am getting more and more impressed with young Bridge each game he plays, somebody at the club is working well with him.Jimmy will be sold at the end of the season. Also, i believe, we have suffered from the poxy international break.Not so much from the long lay off from club play, as it was the forced changes to the team from certain players being knackered.There were several times in the game when i wondered to myself if Crespo was playing if he would have been able to just tap in something, that one cross in particular that went all the way to the far post and beyond without a S'ton player even getting close to it.Classic place for likes of Crespo to be and nod in a simple goal. Ah well, can't really bitch as we still took all three. Watched the United game earlier and i must say they are very beatable this season.A one man team for sure and if it were the old days you could bet a years wages that Ranieri would go up to one of the defenders and say "kick him out of the game". This would, literally, be done, and if we lost a defender doing it, it would be looked upon as a fair exchange. We don't really have a Harris type player like that anymore do we? Nobody has really i suppose. Big week coming up.
We sat back after Melch scored one..... was a difficult pill to swallow seeing that we were on the back paddle for the last ten minutes or so. The lads didn't show any urgency going up and Southampton locked their midifled so tight, it made it even more difficult to do so when the lads wanted to play the ball in their half of the field. Three points is wonderful, Prague and ManUre must be high on the agenda list when Ranieri fielded yesterday's first eleven no doubt. But there was no shape to our midifield at all, it was horrible to watch especially in the first half. Looking forward to next week though. Will Gronks ever gonna get a start soon? Sigh.
Watched the game and I must say it was rather boring. I was fairly tired (game started at 2:00am in Melbourne), so the fact that the first half was boring almost made me fall asleep. I could never fall asleep watching Chelsea, though. Ever. As soon as the half time whistle went, I went to get a roll to keep me awake during the half time break. Lampard’s transition pass to JFH, who set up Melchiot for his goal was very good play. It’s always good hitting the lead early in the second half (which turns out to be the only goal – like Gallas’ goal last year against ‘Boro). We got killed in the statistics. Southampton won 54% of the ball, had an extra 9 shots and Chelsea only had the one shot on target – the goal. I am so looking forward to the Man. United match. Starts at 3:00am, so I will have a long, long night by the looks of things. Let’s hope Fulham can force a result against Arsenal, just like it did a few weeks ago against Man. United. We are very short odds to be SP, too. $1.28. Nice.
I'll not often take credit for a goal, but... ...let me tell you what happened during the Southampton game. A friend of mine recently got me involved with RC car racing. So, being a longtime F1 fan, I plunked down my cash for a Tamiya 1/10 scale Tyrrell P34 (6 wheel racing car from the mid-seventies). Well, it tooke me a week to put it all together, then two evenings to paint and put the decals on the body. So, at halftime of the game, I decided me and my 9 year old son should go test the car, a battery lasting about 15 minutes. I drove up and down our residential street a few times and was happy with how great the model looked and how seriously fast it runs: 30mph at 1/10 scale = 300mph. I'd run for about 10 minutes when I handed the controls over to junior. The way I figure, he slammed it into the wall at 300 scale miles-per-hour at about the exact instant that Melchiot scored. This was maybe 10 seconds after junior had taken the wheel. If you believe in Karma, then my universe remained in perfect balance, as junior destoyed my $500 investment in RC car racing fun, but Chelsea scraped out a much needed away win. Any regrets? Nope, just rebuilding the car and if need be, I'll hand the controls back over to junior tomorrow or Saturday. Of course, you can't set these sort of things up, they must happen as it did on Saturday, two coincidental seemingly unrelated events that perfectly balanced one another, at least in my world view. I also would not expect Melchiot to score. Obviously, having Mario make a Giggs-esque run and end it with slotting the ball into the net (and not launching it into row zz) adds a great deal to my belief in the supernatural. If it had been a cross bouncing off JFH's derrier and into goal, I'd have never made a connection with my misfortune. After all, that's how he usually scores!