Stoke v Chelsea

                                              Stoke v Chelsea

This is going to be a short post I'm afraid, mainly because I didn't watch the game or the highlights extensively after learning the result. Saturday afternoon took me to the cinema to watch The Hunger Games: Catching fire (see my film blog for that), and as the showing started at 3:30pm, I checked my phone one final time before switching it off to see Schurrle had put us 1-0 up. good I thought. No disrespect to Stoke, but I thought they were a team that shouldn't be bothering us too much and without being too arrogant even quietly to myself, I thought we would win comfortably. However (and I swear this is what I thought to myself) if I turn my phone on after the film and find we've lost 3-2 or something stupid like that, I will be very annoyed...... well guess what happened?

I did end up watching the highlights, but didn't want to dwell too much out of annoyance and despondence. Good goal by Schurrle and then some truly shocking defending (from a corner AGAIN) that led to Crouch (Chelsea fan) scoring a close range goal. No one wanted to clear the ball it looked. 5 mins into the second half and my favourite non Chelsea materialist footballer, Ireland, scores a decent looking goal to put Stoke 2-1 up. Great. However Schurrle looks like he's dug us out of a hole with another very good long range strike on his left foot with 18 mins left. 2-2. All I know after that is that after what looked like a bit of  counter attack (I only saw brief highlights) Assaidi scored some ridiculous long range goal from the edge of the penalty area worthy of winning any match - fair play. I take my invisible hat off to you sir. But seriously - we lost to Stoke??

Why? Well, I have no idea, but I now realise our defence is playing a big part in our shortcomings this season. Firstly, it seems like our failure to sign a defender in the summer, as well as a decent holding midfielder is going to cost us. Mourinho clearly doesn't rate Bertrand (can't think) so keeps playing Dave (Azpillerquato-hingey) at left back when he's a right back in Coles absence. Ivanovic is a centre back playing at right back (he can put in a good shift there though) and Terry's best days are past him. Luiz is unreliable and while Cahil is ok, he seemed to be the one positive thing about our defence. Holding midfield, when Josh McEachran broke though, I thought he was the next Terry aka Chelsea hero in the making. Always put in a decent shift, but regrettably seems to have lost his way, and I'm not sure I blame subsequent Chelsea managers beyond Ancelotti for not rating him, I'm starting to feel like he wont make it at Chelsea. Going out with that Corrie bird is distracting him, and he doesn't seem on the ball (excuse the pun) as much anymore. So that leaves Mikel, who I personally don't rate (too erratic) and anyone else that gets played there i.e Ramires or Lampard is not holding midfield material. 

Well we need to sort it at the back or I fear this season will be something of an anti-climax in the midst of the special ones return (and I did fear this amongst the euphoria). But who better to sort the situation than the master himself?

In Jose we trust :-)