Chelsea 2-0 Arsenal: “Drogba didn't do much...”

The date is 24th of April 2010. Chelsea have just won the premier league title in front of their home fans by beating Stoke City 4-0. Elsewhere, Manchester City have dismantled Arsenal at the Emigrants Stadium with a 3-1 scoreline.

The Sky reporter asks the Arsenal manager, whose team is 15 points behind league winners Chelsea: “Arsene, where does this leave you now?"

Arsene responds, “Well, we need to keep the faith. We showed good spirit and mentality. We dominated the possession and we were only lacking a bit of sharpness. But we keep improving which is good. Chelsea can still drop points between now and the end of the season. So you never know.” Sky reporter finally responds, “Wake up, you stupid c***”.

For me, there’s nothing better in football than seeing Chelsea thump Arsenal. That’s right on top. That’s the summit. Any manager who does that for Chelsea and any player who guides us to do that gets my respect. People wonder why I hate Arsenal so much.

I must say I find it strange when I see people who don’t despise them. They are pretenders. They are show ponies. Yet they (manager, players, and fans) think that they are the Gods of football and the others are just rugby tacklers with no skill. And they sometimes very openly belittle the other teams. See what Wenger said about Aston Villa last month and every team that he couldn’t beat.

I was impressed with Ancelotti’s team selection. In fact, he had picked the very same eleven that I wanted him to pick. No place for Deco or Joe Cole in the first team. Ballack was important to break down their attacks while someone like Mikel is always pure gold against Arsenal.

I was hoping that we play 4-3-3 but we played our diamond. Arshavin again played in the striker role, even after saying "if Arsenal want to be champions, how can they select me as the striker."

Meanwhile the once-natural striker Theo "Treadmill" Walcott was in the wing. Anyway, I no longer fear Arshavin. Of late, he’s been shite. He’s lost his heart. He’s upset and feels hopeless. All this shows in his football. I was hoping that Clichy starts as I knew that’s where we’ll get our goals.

Chelsea going 2-0 up by half time was not a surprising thing for those who have been following premier league. As soon as we went ahead, I thought we’ll smash them with another couple of goals. But we didn’t. Instead we chose to let them have the ball.

The key is "we chose" to let them have the ball. We let them have the ball so we can exploit their fatal defensive weakness which would surely surface a few times in a span of 90 minutes.

And especially after going up 2-0 against a city rival, why would play in any other way? Arsene Wenger said in his post match interview that they (Arsenal) were the better team on the pitch. That’s being either a complete idiot or a cunning politician. The fact is, Chelsea never had to get beyond their first gear while Arsenal where throwing everything at us. Chelsea didn’t have to try too hard to beat Arsenal.

The smile on John Terry’s face is back. His header to assist Drogba for the first goal was brilliant. And Drogba’s movement to get into that position was also class. And what can I say about the second goal. Arshavin lost the ball and was simply watching Lampard run with it.

Frank ran for about 40 yards completely uninterrupted or unchecked. When Lampard gave it to Drogba on the right wing, I was expecting Drogba to cross it in. Such was Drogba’s confidence, against Arsenal defence in particular, he feinted and dummied his way in and blasted one to the near post to send me crazy.

Did you notice that as the ball was travelling in, Almunia had closed his eyes! It’s a shame that Drogba couldn’t get his hattrick. He was a bit unfortunate with the free kick hitting the bar while Almunia had written it off with no effort. Look, if it’s not already, it is official now—Arsenal are Drogba’s bitch.

Ashley Cole was so close to scoring a goal against his ex-club. Lampard and Anelka also missed some opportunities. I thought Anelka was not sharp enough for the occasion and must have been subbed much earlier. As we always do with Arsenal, we bossed the midfield. We dictated the pace of the game and what happened on the pitch.

I was particularly impressed with Lampard’s effort. Always fighting for the ball and always putting pressure on the opposition. Arsenal also had a few chances but our defence was mostly perfect and if they let anything in, Petr Cech was there like a rock. The left-handed save that he made to prevent a Bendtner shot was top class anticipation. Ivanovic did leave his zone unattended a few times but Arsenal could not really exploit that space.

The performance by John Obi Mikel today is something the no-longer-young, over-rated, over-paid chicks at Arsenal should take note of. Mikel joined us with a reputation. He had his teenager moments of his career but he has worked hard. He wasn’t thrown at the premier league and champions league just to prove a point.

He was instead made to work hard for his spot in the team. His only ticket to the first team was consistent performance. In a team that had Makelele and has players like Essien, Lampard and Ballack, he knew that he had to be really really good to make it. I must I was so so pleased with his performance today. This is exactly how you ‘develop’ a player.

The spotlight was on John Terry today too. This was his first match at home since the Vanessa story broke out and the first game since he was removed from England captaincy. How did he do? Bloody great! He was at his best as always.

Last season he had a patch were Carvalho and Alex were above him on merit. This season he is well and truly back. For me, one of the greatest sights in football is John Terry launching himself horizontally like a rocket, to make a clearance. I saw that today too.

No one can say this man is going through a personally traumatic period. A round of applause to the home crowd that supported him all through the match and nice of him to recognise that by giving his shirt.

We expect Terry to be able to play as well as he has, irrespective of what’s going on with him. That’s because of what he is. We are a team of top professionals. We’ve seen Chelsea players play on top of their game like they had no personal lives, even through the tough times.

Okay, trivia question time. At the end of the match which manager said this: “I am completely happy with the performance and the spirit.” I’m sure you’ll get the wrong answer. The answer is Arsene Wenger.

After the match, very predictably, Wenger said they dominated the game and all that nonsense. All I can say is he is lying. He is lying to himself and also to the Arsenal fans. Who would in their right mind say that Arsenal dominated Chelsea today? Here is Carlo Ancelotti’s "fantastic" response to the comments from short-sighted Arsene Wenger.

"

Maybe Arsenal had more possession than us but this is not football, football is attack and defence as well as keeping possession when you need to, and results also.

We deserved to win because you when you are two goals up it is important to do counter-attack and we did fantastic counter attack. It was an unbelievable second goal—fantastic movement, fantastic passing and fantastic shooting by Didier.

This is football. We did fantastic defensive work because when it is 2-0 and you go to score more it is normal to have to defend. We did fantastic work together for 90 minutes and it was a very good performance. Sometimes you have to show attacking play and sometimes you have to defend.

"

Half a dozen "fantastics" in one paragraph is a bit too much. Someone should help him with magnificent, superb, amazing, stupendous, scintillating, mind-blowing, astounding, astonishing etc. Hope he gets to use these for the rest of the season.

If I were Carlo I’d have said that "we didn’t even have to get off our first gear. It turned out to be an easy match."

Let’s remember that Arsenal were gearing up for a reaction since they were thumped by Man United last week while we had to play an away game mid-week. Wenger is the worst loser in football. He loses so often but hasn’t learned how to be honest and graceful at defeat. Ignore his comments and let’s hail Carlo. He gets a 10/10 in my books for team selection, tactics, substitution and his fantastic response to Wenger.

So, we’re back on top. Only today, only now, I realise that there are only 13 games to go. I mean, we’re getting so close to the finish line, aren’t we? Out of this 13 matches, we have Everton (A), Man City (H), Aston Villa (H), Man United (A), Tottenham (A), and Liverpool (A).

That’s six toughies plus the relegation battlers’ last round of fights. We just need to keep winning—13 wins would do. Good news is, Man Utd have a similar run-in. With the kind of form we’re in, we’re certainly allowed to turn our hopes into expectations. For now, enjoy the win!

By the way, did you send that text message out: “yo alex, we’d been ‘battered’, just as you wanted...”