CHELSEA  V  SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY

KICK OFF

8pm

DATE

Wednesday 29th December 1999

AT

Stamford Bridge

FIXTURE

FA Carling Premiership

MAN OF THE MATCH

ATTENDENCE

SCORE

Dennis Wise

3-0

32,938

SCORERS

Wise 31, Flo 34, Morris 83

CHELSEA

SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY

8/10

REFS PERFORMANCE

A. D'Urso

REFEREE

ASSISTANT REFEREES

A.Martin
D.Bryan

TEAMS

CHELSEA

Ed De Goey, Bernard Lambourde, Emerson Thome, Frank Leboeuf, Celestine Babayaro, Dan Petrescu, Didier Deschamps, Roberto Di Matteo, Gabriele Ambrosetti, Gustavo Poyet, Tore Andre Flo

SUBSTITUTES

Wise 22 (Deschamps) Morris 81 (Ambrosetti) Zola 81 (Flo) Cudicini, Terry

Frank Leboeuf

BOOKED

SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY

Srnicek, Nolan, Walker, Atherton, Hinchcliffe Alexandersson, Jonk, Sonner, Briscoe, De Bilde, Booth

SUBSTITUTES

Haslam 61(Sonner) Sibon 61 (Briscoe) Cresswell 70 (Booth) McKeever, Pressman

BOOKED

Booth, Alexandersson

MATCH REPORT

Vialli's battle cry before the match was to treat the rest of the Premiership matches as Cup Finals, and that is what he got from the Chelsea players in this very one-sided match.

Chelsea were at a canter to beat a very poor Sheffield Wednesday side who on this performance deserved to be bottom of the league.

Vialli yet again favoured a foreign eleven to start the game with Bernard Lambourde coming in for flu victim Albert Ferrer and Dennis Wise and Gianfranco Zola on the bench having just got over the Milennium flu bug.

Gus was again made Captain and although not getting on the scoresheet had a wonderfull game having a big part in all 3 goals, he looks to be releshing his position just behind Flo  and his approach and link up play a different class.

The game got of to a laboured start with Wednesday looking dangerous on the breaks and Ed having to make a couple of important saves early on.

We soon took charge of the game, and once again poor finishing had let us down.

Following a clash of heads in the 22nd minute Deschamps was Substituted for concussion to replaced by Dennis Wise who quickly stamped his authority on the game.

Some 10 minutes later with Wise buzzing around the park a deep cross from Petrescu found Gus lurking on the far post, he met the cross and a wonderfull headed ball back across the face of the goal fell to Wise who fired the ball home first time into the back of the net.

Wise just got better as the night went on and was not letting his bout of flu get to him, and on 34 minutes Chelsea went 2-0 up when Gus put a through ball onto Flo who superbly beat the offside trap to run on and fire the ball past Srnicek.

Flo is now starting to find a rich vein of form and at this rate may even be a 20 goal striker this season and must surely keep Sutton on the bench or force him to find another club, because Flo has everything that Sutton lacks, pace, a better first touch and most importantly of all he scores goals.

The second half saw Chelsea basicaly keep things tight and could of had quite a few more goals but poor finishing was the culprit yet again as well as Srniicek who made 2 wonderfull saves from a Di Matteo drive and a Poyet thunderbolt.

On 81 minutes Ambrosetti who looks to be too fragile to be effective in the hurly burly of the Premiership was replaced by Morris and Zola on for Flo, the substitution looked to have payed off ,as 2 minutes later another great cross yet again found Gus who's glancing header fell into the stride of Morris who somehow chested and bundled the ball into the Wednesday net to make it 3-0 and send the travelling Wednesday fans home with thoughts of Nationwide football next season.

I have to say Sheffield Wednesday are by far the worst side I have seen at the Bridge this season, their players lack any quality and their commitment absolutely nil, they really do look like a side on its way out of the Premiership which is a shame as they are big club heeped in tradition.

For Chelsea though things are looking brighter and if we can get a result at Coventry, a place in the Champions League next season looks a possibility.

"Watch us go"

Viva Vialli