CHELSEA  V  LEICESTER CITY

DATE

KICK OFF

3pm

Saturday 15th  January 2000

FA Carling Premiership

AT

Stamford Bridge

FIXTURE

ATTENDENCE

SCORE

MAN OF THE MATCH

35,063

Ed De Goey

1-1

SCORERS

CHELSEA

Wise 85

LEICESTER CITY

Taggart 41

7/10

REFS PERFORMANCE

Graham Barber

REFEREE

ASSISTANT REFEREES

G.Turner
A.Garratt

TEAMS

CHELSEA

Ed De Goey, Albert Ferrer, Emerson Thome, Frank Leboeuf, Jon Harley, Dan Petrescu, Didier Deschamps, Dennis Wise, Roberto Di Matteo, Gianfanco Zola, George Weah

SUBSTITUTES

Flo 64(Ferrer) Poyet 46 (Petrescu) Ambrosetti 46(Deschamps) Cudicini, Terry

BOOKED

LEICESTER CITY

Arphexad, Sinclair, Elliott, Taggart, Gilcrist, Eadie, Zagorakis, Oakes, Gunnlaugsson, Marshall, Heskey

SUBSTITUTES

Guppy 51(Gunnlaugsson) Fenton 37(Marshall) Flowers, Thomas, Stewart

Fenton

BOOKED

MATCH REPORT

Chelsea went into the game with a little bit of confidence folowing the Tottenham game but Leicester soon knocked that confidence out of Chelsea with a battling display and commitment that Chelsea dont possess.

Chelsea clearly had the  majority of the possestion but produced nothing up front at all.

There was no width about Chelsea's play and Vialli's pairing of Zola and Weah failed to produce the goods, with the supply to Weah woeful, until Chelsea learn to feed him the type of ball he thrives on Weah will not show us what he is capeable of.

Leicester battled and never gave up the fight and showed no signs of tiredness from their cup match during the week and had quite a few chances to take the lead.

Chelsea on the other hand had produced little apart from a Zola freekick special that Arphaxad easily saved.

The fact that chances are not being created puts pressure on your defence to defend and lapses in concentration occurs out of frustration.

That is what happened with 5 minutes left of the 1st half Taggart was left unmarked in the box and his header hit the post to rebound back to him which he duly converterted.

The halftime whistle could not come quick enough and Chelsea left the pitch to boos from the crowd, the performance was completly unsatisfactory with Deschamps passing a disgrace, have we made a mistake in signing this guy?

The 2nd half was no better with Leicester showing just as much urgency as the first and deserved to go further ahead.

Quite clearly Vialli was a worried man and had to make a few substitutions to try a claw a point from the game, such was the desperation that Vialli brought on Flo for Ferrer giving us 3 strikers and also bringing on Poyet and Ambrosetti to give us some width which we had been lacking in the 1st half.

Ambosetti soon wasted a few chances and you have to question why we signed this Italian piece of shit in the first place.

We never deserved anything from this game and when Wise scored from a Zola freekick with a uncharacteristic header on the 85th minute it was by no means warranted as Leicester were the better team and wanted the game more than Chelsea did.

With the Championship well out of our grasp, we need to question the commitment of the players, their nonchalence to the English domestic game is there for everybody to see.

No Chelsea fan will tolerate many more lacklustre performances like this one and surely the policy of signing foreigners must be questioned.

With a continental manager that policy will be continued and as such, for the sake of the club it may just be time now for Vialli to move on, get our youth policy back on track, and look at players to bring in from this side of the channel.

Viva Vialli
(For how long ?)