Chelsea Loses To Everton At Goodison Park Throwing Title Race Even More Open
Looks like Chelsea is starting to show signs of the strain of a title race and the John Terry scandal that has blighted our club. Admittedly, Everton are always difficult to play against. Unless you happen to be Liverpool, Manchester United or Arsenal, chances are it's hard to score against them and their dogs of war are always snapping at your heels. We have plenty of great players in the team, but none except Joe Cole would be considered to have the guile to match their steel in midfield. Liverpool sometimes gets the lucky break like that set piece goal but we hardly got any of that. The chips are down now and Manchester United are closing in too despite their draw against Villa. That should be considered a good result as Villa are very very hard to break down nowadays with O'Neil in charge. Considering they also played three quarters of the match with 10 men after the sending off of Nani and still got a point, I have to grudgingly give Fergie's men credit again. They always deliver when the situation calls for it.
Most of the post match talk has been of Arsenal getting back into the race. That is only possible if we and United drop more points. They're still six and five points back which looks bridgeable now but in reality I doubt they are good enough to do so. Their win over Liverpool was kinda lucky too as they struggled to break them down and could even have ended with a draw as Fabregas got away with that obvious handball. I'm pretty sure Webb was trying to balance out his error in awarding that last minute free kick to Liverpool when he waved the penalty appeals away. The result should matter little to United since they always believe they'll win every game, while for our players it might be a different case. I think the pressure is starting to get to them in the title race.
Hopefully Ancelotti can rally the boys together and help them manage the situation. Many of them have been title winners plus the gaffer has experience in that too. They can do it but need to have more alternatives when games are tight like last night. Everton really prevented us from playing football and our long ball attempts played right into their hands. Perhaps the consistency is just not happening this season so we must grind them out. Unfortunately it would not look good on Ancelotti since he was brought in to produce fantasy football by Roman.
