11Blues: The Unofficial Chelsea Blog and News

Jimmy Collins has done the moonwalk. True Story.

After scoring a goal after what seemed like three decades, the centre back let his emotions get over himself and proclaimed that he was over the moon.

Aston leapt on to 8th place with the win, and it seems that this season would see the battle for the 4th place hotting up as we move along.

Here is what he had to say

"But I was delighted – to get the winner in a game of this size is always nice.

"It is great scoring a goal for a new club early on. Dunny [Richard Dunne] has already got two so I had to catch him up! I’ve got one now and I’m over the moon.

"The delivery of the balls in from Ashley Young and James Milner is fantastic and I’m sure we’ll get a couple more this season.

"It was a big goal. Obviously we were disappointed to go a goal down when [we] had control of the game, but the lads showed great spirit in coming back to win 2-1."

Second Consecutive Away Defeat, Chelsea go down to a resilient Villa outfit, aided by their own stupidity

The day was going pretty great till Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka decided to screw it up for me. It was a lovely Saturday morning, add to that the fervour of Diwali and you have the ingredients of an auspicious day to come.

It was of course, not to be. Chelsea lost to Villa 1-2 and ruined the day. No, I want to correct myself. The defeat did not ruin my day, the way they managed to earn this defeat did. If the person who invented man-marking were alive today, we would surely have got his suicide note in tomorrow’s paper.

That was about the defence. Hold on, not yet. Whenever Villa wanted to charge, they were allowed to, and in a manner more fluent than we could ever achieve during the 90 minutes of torture.

Chelsea, as usual, got more chances, more shots on goal, and more opportunities to kill the game. But who cares about them. The conversion was as bad as it would ever get this season. What is the point of having so many chances, if there is only one goal to show for it?

Take a look at the following stats and let me know why a team with 68% possession, 7 shots on target, 21 shots, 9 corners, and with the keeper having to make only one save, lost 1-2. It is beyond me.

Ancelotti must be rueing his lap dance by now. He should have been here teaching these lads a thing or two about man marking.

Drogba put us in front in the 15th minute. But that was irrelevant as Aston bounced back and then ended up doubling their lead.

It is interesting what Chelsea FC has to say about this:

Drogba received the ball, back to goal, some 25 yards out, and given space to turn by his marker, did so, unleashing a speculative effort that bounced awkwardly in front of Villa goalkeeper Brad Friedel, and up into the net.

All good, but listen to the very next line, kind of sums up the game for me:

It was without question more than we deserved at that stage, having been wasteful in possession and of little threat going forward, but Villa had been equally uninspiring, with only the industrious Milner and the tricky Ashley Young on the opposite flank suggesting they could cause our backline much trouble.

If it would have been a more enterprising team today, we would have been thoroughly embarrassed. I was thanking god that it was an away game.

I do not want to talk about how they scored, specially the second goal (ask Nicolas Anelka).

Here are the formalities:

Aston Villa (4-4-2): Friedel; Cuellar, Collins, Dunne, Warnock; Milner, Sidwell, Petrov (c), Young; Carew (Heskey 81), Agbonlahor.
Scorers Dunne 31’, Collins 51’
Booked Agbonlahor 34’, Milner 90+2’

Chelsea (4-1-2-1-2): Cech; Bosingwa (Ivanovic 68), Carvalho, Terry (c), A Cole; Essien; Lampard, Malouda (J Cole 84); Deco; Anelka, Drogba.
Scorers Drogba 15’
Booked A Cole 45’