by bigmick » Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:19 pm
I wondered how long it would take before the blame for our defeat got shovelled onto one player. It had to be Traore (because his rash challenge gave the first goal away), Hyppia (because he was on the scene as we conceded most of the goals) or Crouch (because fior various reasons Chelsea adjusted their tactics to make him less effective). I'm sorry but I don't go along with it. We were beaten by a superior team yesterday and I think we contributed to outr downfall with various mistakes and arguably with our set-up but it wasn't one players fault.
For the first goal, Traore was a bit unlucky to be fair. Nobody could accuse him of trying to over elaborate, he attempted to put it into row Z with his clearance. Drogba got the bounce of the ball, off his hands (for me in that situation with those consequences, when a player gains control of the ball as a result of the ball hitting his hands whether intentional or not, it should be handball) and then was astute in getting in between Traore and the ball. Traore's tackle was a terrible one so I can only conclude that he made a bad mistake. He wasn't the only one yesterday but given that we equalized the goal he "gave away" and then went on to be the better side afterwards, it's hard to accept that his mastake cost us the game.
All goals in football are important, but Chelsea's second yesterday was the one which defined the game. This is true both in the change to the scoreline and in the fact that it came just before half-time. The culprit for that one? Nobody's mentioned it on here but it was Luis Garcia, one of my favorite players. As Duff broke through our depleted midfield with the ball the alarm bells were ringing off their mounts. Garcia tracked him but Duff cleverly got his body in between the tracker by getting accross him. "Have him over FFS" was the call, but no Duff progressed, offloaded then eventually scored.
Traore was at fault for the first goal. Traore is poor in posession of the football. Traore is not the reason we lost yesterday.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".