Chelsea v Crystal Palace and Sunderland v Chelsea league cup

                                  Chelsea v Crystal Palace and Sunderland v Chelsea league cup

Where to start with two stuttering performances? Well, obviously I'll start with the Palace game as that was first. A game against the bottom of the table Eagles was a good game to build up our goal difference, as with Liverpool and the buck toothed rascal banging them in, City scoring goals for fun (they hit six against Arsenal earlier that day), I thought this was a good chance to build that up. But then I looked at the team sheet and saw Torres was starting - my heart dropped....

Granted Chelsea are short on strikers that can score, but Ba has looked the better player, yet Jose doesn't seem to rate him. Saw Fernando starts again. There were also starts for Willian and Luiz. The game got off to a good start, with Willian and Torres combining to give us the lead. Willians shot cannoned back off the post and Torres rolled in the rebound. He showed great striker instinct at being the first to react (something a 50 million pound striker should always do to be fair but oh well). The lead didn't last though - there ever erratic David Luiz did one of his trademark charges from defence to get the ball, didn't get it, and Palace worked the ball to the left for Ward to cross for Chamakh (who would have been marked by Luiz had he been there) to sweep the ball home. Grrr. Anyway, Chelsea soon went back in front thanks to a fantastic strike from Ramires on the edge of the area - great goal.

Sadly, that was about as good as it got for Chelsea - the second half was very poor and even more worryingly, it is becoming a familiar sight. Palace missed attempt after attempt, the worst one Stuart O'Keefe had two close range attempts blocked in quick succession. Chelsea themselves had chances to wrap the game late, with Schurrle missing a one on one and Ramieres messing up when through on goal - my opinion of him is waning as he like Luiz, is becoming very erratic. Still second in the league though...

The Sunderland game, I cared about but also I don't. It's the league cup and we've got bigger fish to fry so a defeat wouldn't have bothered me too much. Obviously you want to see your team win every game though don't you? Several changes were made, the most notable was a return for Samuel Eto' up front. The game started exactly as I expected....boring. I was watching clips of the Ray Winstone film The War Zone on youtube it was that boring. The game livened up though when GOAL LINE TECHNOLOGY was used, to confirm Lampards close range side-footed effort had gone over the line. That really, should have been that. Chelsea were in control, created chances which was a more positive sign, just one problem though..... taking chances. For a striker who has done everything in the game as Samuel Eto' has done, there is one thing he seems to fail to do ....SHOOT. The number of times he got the ball and instead of shooting, just dilly dallied with it or passed.....lets just say I wasn't following him on Twitter by the end of the night.

One minute to go and of course, Chelsea were made to pay for their chances as ex-player Borini side footed home after a hideous goal mouth scramble. The hideous Chelsea defence rears its ugly head in time to mess the night up for Jose. I very much doubt he wanted extra time, although the same could be said for Poyet and Sunderland, they are fighting a relegation battle after all. Extra time was the opposite of the 90 minutes, Sunderland were all over us and fully got their reward with Ki scoring a deserved winner with minutes of extra time left.

So Chelsea are out, and the first trophy we won under Mourinho in is first spell will not be won this time, not this season anyway. Chelsea seem to be stuttering in his return, lack of fruitful signings in the summer, and surprising tactics and team selection - Twitter was awash with criticism from fans. Personally, I don't think you become a bad manager all of a sudden, so I trust in Jose (one could argue we are starting to feel a little bit of what it feels like to be an Arsenal fan, Wenger in, Wenger out lol). Are we even really doing that bad under Jose? Three points behind top, won our Champions league group finishing top and we go joint top if we win (cough cough) at Arsenal on Monday...

We aren't playing, yet still very much in the mix, imagine how well we'd be doing if we DID click all of a sudden?

Well, my next blog after THAT particular will tell you if I still feel that way .... haha.