With NRP missing the Chelsea game, he passed on reporting responsibilities to my good self, sorry for the delay but my busy life , lazy attitude and addiction to online poker has slowed me up a bit. More attempts on goal , more on target , territorial advantage, caught offside less, less fouls committed… Well those are the stats , but i was there and it didn’t feel like that to me.
A low crowd of 14000 saw Chelsea do what they had to to beat a largely un-interested Latics on a pitch that’s slowly sinking into the marshes. The gap in class between sides was evident, but endless bobbling can’t help and there’s no surprise this wasn’t the worlds greatest footballing spectacle.
Sidwell slid Cole in after a minute only to watch Little Joe waste the chance and shoot wide. Most of the first half was missed by most of us due the onset of heavy sleep at that point. Briefly awoken by the noise as Heskey set up Bent and Bent waited and waited and waited… and Wayne Bridge in for the the wantaway Ashley Cole (Ha) was allowed to clear the danger.
Biggest cheers so far came as someone hit the target at first attempt during cross bar challenge.
Chelsea’s first came early in the 2nd half. Anelka superbly put through by Belletti finished with finesse whilst Bramble and Scharner complained wrongly of an offside not given. Scharner running half the length of the pitch and gaining a yellow card for his efforts. With an improved bid from Fulham imminent it might be his last whinge for Latics so we’ll let him off.
Ten minutes on and the Chelsea bench erupted as Uriah Rennie allowed play on with Claude Makele left floored by a Michael Brown elbow. Neither Rennie nor his assistant saw he incident/accident so the FA will no doubt sit down to a repeat showing and deal out some well thought out justice as always. Later interviews with Mr Grant revealed the bench were upset at the ref for not stopping play rather than alleged foul itself.
With 8 minutes of the match left Kevin Kilbane lost out to Anelka, who ran on to set up Shaun Wright-Phillips for his sixth of the season and put Chelsea 2 infront and seemingly out of sight. Those of us left then witnessed a mini revival. Sibierski supplied the moment of the match scoring his self confessed “best goal in English Football”. Marcus bent could’ve dragged the tie into a replay but his injury time blast smashed into the crossbar and Wigan were spared the journey.
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