"Back down to Earth with a whimper"

I was finding it difficult to generate much enthusiasm about this game beforehand, and nothing much has changed now that it's over. The Chelsea players were in much the same state of mind, judging by their performance, and you can't really blame them after the intense excitement of having a streaker charging around on the pitch on Thursday. Oh, and getting to the final of the ECWC ;-)

At first I thought I'd arrived an hour or so early, as for the first time this season the ground was somewhat less than full at 2:45. I believe there were 29,000 or so eventually, but the West Stand was only half full (or should that be half empty ?), which gave the impression of vast empty spaces - I cried bitter tears of sympathy (not) for the odious touts who'd been desperately trying to sell tickets for a match that was far from sold out. I hope you swine were wiped out, serves you right.

The team, not surprisingly, had only two or three players who had featured on Thursday, so I was surprised to see Sparky Hughes after the hideous beating he'd taken from the vengeful Vicenza defenders. He was partnered up front by Flo, and they seemed to cause the Wednesday defence no end of problems before Flo was subbed for reasons which escape me (injury ?). Unfortunately, although they looked dangerous playing off each other, they never really clicked. If they had, the scoreline would have been a lot different.

The game offered a heaven sent opportunity for Eddie Newton to shine, due to the lack of Petrescu, Wise, Le Saux, Poyet, etc., but although he started well enough, his positional sense and understanding of what was going on in the game deteriorated sharply as the game progressed, ending up with him putting in by far his worst performance of the season. A shame, because on his day he is a class player who can run the midfield as well as any, but I wouldn't give much for his chances of getting a CWC Final place on that showing.

To put Eddie's bad game in context, it must be said that Chelsea's performance as a team was littered with unforced errors. Luckily Wednesday could usually be relied on not to take advantage - I dread to think what will happen if Chelsea try playing like that against the Scousers on Saturday.

After twenty minutes or so of fairly inept play from both sides, Earl Barrett had a tussle with Flo inside the area and was adjudged to have brought him down. Although I was in the Shed Upper, I couldn't really tell if it was a pen or not, but I know what BFR thought; the portly clown was wearing a hole in the touchline, gesturing, complaining and spitting out his false teeth at the referee; how we chuckled. I hope you're as good at plaiting sawdust as you say you are, Ron.

Beefy stepped up purposefully to take the penalty, and duly smashed it past Pressman, as expected. I can't say that the celebrations were up to Thursday's standards, but seeing Chelsea score always has a good effect on me, so I was well chuffed. I had been less chuffed a few minutes earlier when, after a dreadful bit of defending by Kharine, Wednesday's ridiculously named Rudi was allowed to collect the ball in the area and tee up his shot into the empty goal, only to smash it against the bar and back into play. After a let-off like that, you knew it wasn't going to be Sheffield's day. Any doubts about that were dispelled when Di Canio had a superb bicycle kick also rebound off the bar a few minutes after Chelsea's goal.

Wednesday's performance was as below-par as ours, fortunately, apart from Carbone and Di Canio, who, for all their niggles and complaints to the ref, at least looked like they were serious about the game. Di Canio and Di Matteo came up against each other a fair bit, and really got stuck in, no favours done or expected. They were mates at the end, though, and were no doubt swapping pizza topping recipes in the tunnel afterwards.

For Chelsea, Granville can obviously play but made far too many mistakes, losing the ball often, Di Matteo had his usual classy performance without being spectacular, and Kharine was OK apart from the Rudi incident, and made an excellent save late on from Di Canio. Newton, as already mentioned, was awful. Steve Clarke played well, foraging down the right touchline and providing some useful crosses to Hughes and Flo, and Leboeuf and Duberry were solid defensively. Charvet was above average, and looked dangerous when breaking with the ball, and Sparky was also good value, fighting for everything as usual, and getting very little from the referee when fouled, which was a lot. I still don't know why Flo was subbed with 20 minutes to go, he could have had three if his luck had been better.

An average performance, then, but with the bonus of coming out of it with three points. It could have been worse.