Birmingham 0-0 Chelsea | Now Hoping for a Hull Victory!

Only yesterday, I said, “It’s Birmingham, not Barcelona.” What an irony! Birmingham have managed something that only Barcelona could, in the last six months. That is, keeping a clean sheet against Chelsea.

Is draw a fair result? I’d say so. We had two or three very good chances which we fluffed. Did we play poorly? I wouldn’t say so. We didn’t play well either. Basically, we didn’t play well enough to win this match. We had the attacks going. We made some good moves. The one thing that was missing was that desire to somehow win this match. It appeared that we weren’t confident of winning.

We were decent. We had the possession. We had the attacking moves. We had the shots. We had everything except the cutting edge. I think we lacked the cutting edge because we think we are officially not in form. When a team does not exude confidence, it shows. The body language of the players was all wrong.

Birmingham defended well and were deserving of their point. All that Chelsea could manage was to camp in their half with no intelligent movement from the players. We made it easy for Birmingham to mark us.

We were missing both Essien and Anelka. Essien in the midfield gives us so much with his ball holding skills and distribution skills. His absence is so very evident. You can’t also help it because he is special. When you can’t find too many players like Essien in Europe, how can we find a replacement for him from within our squad? His absence will be felt.

We need to get on with it. Anelka would be back for the Hull City match next month. I have a lot of faith in younsters such as Kakuta, Sturridge, Matic and Borini. Plus, you have a mercurial Yuri Zhirkov. I think they’ll see us through this January.

I find it hard to blame it on Ancelotti. Already we hear a lot of voices on how Ancelotti is version two of Scolari. I just don’t buy that. Under Scolari, we were struggling to play. We couldn’t create chances. There were games when we didn’t have one shot on goal in the whole half. We were clueless under him.

The team under Ancelotti undoubtedly plays good football and wins matches. Even in the matches where we have drawn or lost, we have played decently well. Unlike the Scolari days, there were hardly any matches were Chelsea were outplayed.

This is traditionally a tough month. None of the teams have an all-win record this month. Our rivals are also dropping points this month. I know this is the right time for us to be picking up the wins to extend the lead.

But there’s only so much you can do. When you see Birmingham in top eight and Aston Villa in top four, you need to realise that this time the league is very competitive. Even in this tough season, we’re still on top of the table. Being at the top of the table, the last thing we must do is panic.

Let’s hope that both Man Utd and Arsenal lose today. And, of course, the regular prayer that Rooney and Arshavin get sent off for a direct red card. I’m not asking for too much. Am I?