Delighted with the result but disappointed with the performance. Wigan has never been an easy place to go and get results atleast for us since they have been in the Premier League. In ‘05-’06 it too an injury time winner from Crespo to separate the two teams on a day when Wigan could have won with a little bit of luck. Just after Crepo’s goal, I remember Mourinho going over to to Jewell to give his commiserations before the match was over. Jose knew we had been in a game and Wigan deserved to get something out of that game. The following season was another match where Wigan dug in and fought for every ball. Robben and Heskey were the two players who made all the difference that day. We went up 2-0 in the first half but then an inspired performance from Heskey saw Wigan pulling two goals back. It looked like two points dropped before Robben scored at the death to give us all three points. We didn’t deserved to win that game too and Jose said the same in the post match interview. Last season was a relatively comfortable 2-0 win but Wigan did came strongly at us in the second half of that match. It would be fair to say that Wigan-Chelsea clash has lived upto it’s reputation of another tight physical game where we could have so easily dropped points but we didn’t.
When you score against a team so early in the game there are two things that could happen. Their heads might drop down and they get rolled over by the opposition or they might come back strongly at you. I am afraid the second was the case today. Steve Bruce has put together a very decent side and some of the players in his team surely know how to play football. Palacios and Valencia already gave a glimpse of what they had to offer last season and Zaki, the Egyptian striker made a strong case for himself today. They fought as a unit, chased every ball, pressed at every opportunity, closed down spaces and more importantly won the physical battle. It is on days like these when you look at the teamsheet and wish you had a player like Drogba to call upon. We needed a more direct approach.
We lost the game in the midfield today. It was there for everyone to see. Palacios was brilliant while our worldclass quartet of Lampard, Ballack, Essien and Deco had a bad shift. Ballack and Essien were not fully fit but still Scolari persisted with them for the full 90 minutes. I am not sure why he did that because we had a few players on the bench who we could have easily brought on. It was never going to be easy to play a slick passing game on the JJB pitch. It did look in a much better shape than last year’s but last Friday’s rugby game between Warriors and Rhinos had caused a bit of wear and tear.
I won’t criticize Anelka and Joe Cole much because they received little or no service from the midfield. We seemed a bit short of ideas in the middle today. Sometimes it seemed that players didn’t knew whether to push on or sit back. Anelka can’t hold the ball up like Drogba so we needed our midfield to link up play with the forwards more but it wasn’t happening. We should have subbed Ballack at half time and brought Malouda/Kalou on and went with a 4-3-3. Wigan have one of the biggest pitches in the Premier League so it was disappointing to see us not making full use of the wide areas. Essien surely had one of his poorest performances in a Chelsea shirt. So many of our players in the middle had an off day that I am not sure whether it was down to tactics or individual performances.
There were some positives from the game though. Petr Cech was brilliant at the back and some of the saves he made were top draw. MOTM for me. I won’t say we defended really well because we failed to close down on some occasions and at times gave their players too much space but I was quiet impressed with our defending on set-pieces and high balls. I was impressed by the way Terry bossed evertyhing in air. Deco though being not brilliant was one of the better players in our midfield today and he took his free kick really well.
There is no need to press the panic button. The important thing is that we won the game and we are top of the league. We have got an excellent group of players here who are capable of putting a much better performance than what they managed today. It is still early days for Scolari and I am sure today’s game would be an eye opener for him in terms of how tough the games are sometimes going to be against some of the so called smaller teams. It shows the strengh of the Premier League.
I don’t really go into that beautiful-ugly football debate. I believe that first you have to play well. The beauty and the beast thing follows. We didn’t played really well today which was disappointing but I am sure Scolari would sort it out. In a way it is good that people have seen both sides of Scolari’s management in the first two games. People who were going ga-ga over Samba spirit taking over this Chelsea side would take a back seat now. To win the league you need to show pragmatism, strength of character and resoluteness and even though we were not particularly good today we hung in there and got the three points. Onwards and upwards.
