Due to my absence from this match, here's a guest report from Billy "The Bridge" Brown:

On paper Chelsea's defence, like the "Elite Republican Guard" looks strong, robust and well disciplined. but as we know, it didn't take long to get past them during the Gulf War...

Our league of nations however, are a little more generous. Apart from "Beefy", who I thought was magnificent, they were as about as alert as a team of sloths. I would have preferred Albert Steptoe to Albert Ferer. "Soxxy" should change his name to Le Slow, and as for Duberry - well, the less said the better.

Though we started later than the other team (again!) at least we weren't caught on the hop. Whilst we were trying to find our own players, so were they. We were all at sixes and sevens, the trouble was there were 9 other numbers that we failed to recognise...

However, after 15 minutes we started to pass the ball and looked remotely like a team. there was some good work by Poyet, Gigi and Zola, and a shot by Poyet somehow was saved and Babayaro poked it home. At last ! I thought the "Celestine Prophecy" was here, and we were gonna stuff those magpies good and proper !

Unfortunately, I had forgotten that Vialli had taken it upon himself to buy one of the best defenders in the world and play him in midfield, sell one of our centre halves, not sign a perfectly good Frenchman (Charvet, who was outstanding for Newcastle), and play Duberry in his place. Now I know Doobs tries his best, but he is just not good enough, he has no footballing brain, and is way too slow, hence Andreas Anderson waltzes in and pulls one back.....the familiar story.

We did look much better in the second half, when Le Slow went off, and "Ace Ventura" (Pet rescu - geddit ?) came on, we had a player along with Zola who actually looked like he wanted to be on a winning side. He caused them all sorts of problems and made us look a lot better than we were. Franco did make Shay Given pull off a stunning save, which, apart from that and the goal , were about the highlights (not forgetting Shearer's booking for being a whingeing northern bastard).

Our midfield was absolutely appalling, Poyet and Di Matteo looked liked lost sheep, and whilst "The Rock" showed some silkiness, he should never have been there in midfield, and as I said earlier, apart from Leboeuf, Zola and Petrescu, the rest: if they wanted to watch, they should've paid their 30 odd quid along with the rest of us...alas!

Let's hope next Friday we don't get spun like a roulette wheel in Monaco...I know it will take time for the World Cup stars to settle down, and the team to gel, but if you want to win the Premiership you cannot afford to drop points in games against lesser opposition.