Woeful finishing, Good result

If Chelsea had converted even HALF the chances they were gifted by Everton on Saturday, we'd have won this match 10-1. This is not just me being a bit fanciful; it's a stone cold, full-on, balls accurate FACT. Luckily, Everton were so unremittingly AWFUL that even a mediocre kindergarten side could have scored against them. I know that doesn't say much for the Chelsea strikers, but there you are: honesty, in this case, is the best policy.

It was a beautiful afternoon from a spectator's point of view, with warm sunshine flooding the stadium. The pitch looked perfect. Ideal conditions for a Saturday afternoon watching the greatest spectator sport on Earth. The players may have found it a bit on the warm side, but what the hell. Everton kicked off, and managed to hold onto the ball for about thirty seconds, after which they were lucky to get another sniff for the whole match. I've never seen a more one-sided game than this one. It was absurd that we weren't 3-0 up within five minutes and 8-0 by half time, instead of just 1-0. In the first half hour, Gus Poyet, Dennis Wise, and Franco Zola all had what looked to be certain goals somehow scrambled away from the Everton goal.

Chelsea were stroking the ball around almost unopposed by a defensive-minded Everton, and it wasn't long before the pressure paid off, with the best move of the match. Mikael Forssell robbed the ball off an Everton defender who had been bringing the ball out. All the Everton players were racing up the pitch, so when Forssell quickly released the ball out to the left for Graeme Le Saux, they were in trouble. Le Saux prepared to cross, but, noticing there were no blue shirts in the area, he held the ball up until he saw Franco Zola and Forssell arriving in the box. He duly provided a sublime cross for Franco to run onto and nod the ball past Myhre, who was rooted to the spot. One of the best team goals I've seen this season.

By this time, Chelsea were absolutely running the game, and we had every reason to expect a sackful of goals, and within minutes further Chelsea pressure left SuperDan Petrescu one on one with Myhre, but instead of putting the ball past the keeper he shot against his legs. The groans were horrible to hear. Chelsea were using the width of the pitch to good effect, and the Scousers just couldn't hold them, in spite of the more unconventional efforts of Scouse Scotsman Don Hutchison, which mainly involved tackles that seemed calculated to remove limbs at their sockets; and there was me thinking that he was supposed to be a striker these days... There were countless other attacks from Chelsea, one in particular so nearly resulting in a second goal, when Zola found himself unmarked in the box with the ball, his shot on the turn flashing over the bar. Cue more horrible groans. It was like being in an episode of the Munsters...

Half time eventually came with no further goals, to general incredulity, none more so than from the Everton players. We all thought that Everton would come back at us in the second half, and although they seemed marginally more animated, Chelsea were still running the game. Countless times we watched Chelsea effortlessy bypassing a defence that changed from flat back four to five and back again with no notable success, only to watch all the good work undone by poor finishing. The law of averages won out in the end, as SuperDan made up for his early howler by bundling the ball over the line through a crowd of players from a neat pass from Zola. As soon as he'd scored he got substituted, which was a bit odd - maybe he hurt himself scoring the goal.

A few minutes later a rare attack from Everton found Chelsea's defence sleeping when Everton's only decent player, Jeffers, collected the ball just inside our half, ran past Leboeuf (who was carrying an injury, to be fair to him) and unleashed a shot on the run from around 25 yards that left De Goey standing as the ball flashed past him, low into the corner of the goal. It all had a horribly familiar ring to it, and we spent the next ten minutes biting our nails as Everton realised that they weren't as shit as they thought they were.

Some elements in the crowd started their usual barracking when things aren't going their way, wankers that they are, and things were looking grim when we were awarded a free kick just outside the box. Zola stepped forward and blasted the ball over the wall. It hit an unfortunate Everton defender's head on the way past and deflected beautifully into the goal, although it looked like it was going in anyway. Suddenly the bloke behind me, who had been honking about how crap Chelsea were since Everton had scored, was acting as though we'd won the FA Cup, the moron. I couldn't stop myself asking him if he'd have turned up if it was raining. Luckily he was too stupid to get my drift.

The only other thing worth mentioning happened just before the end, when Barmby found himself alone against De Goey. He shot from maybe six yards, but De Goey made a superb reaction save to palm the ball away. It was a magnificent piece of goalkeeping from a generally magnificent keeper. Chelsea did themselves no harm on Saturday, but the finishing will need to be a lot better against Leeds on Wednesday if we're to beat them.

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