CHELSEA 4 - 0 NORWICH : dont be deceived by the scoreline!
Posted on February 18th, 2007 by blue champion. 
Excellent ball control and no-nonsense football!
Not many times would you see a 4-0 match so evenly balanced and controlled by both the teams. Credit to Norwich. They played with all their heart and they deserve to go back with a proud performance. A couple of occasions, they came inches closer to scoring. Only bad luck and Super Cech denied them from scoring. I never expected Norwich to outpossess us, but they did. Now we have 6 consecutive clean sheets, 18 goals in those matches that included three premiership opponents.
Though Norwich took the game to us and had some very close chances, our open play defence was spot on. Once again Diarra had very good presence. His ball control and retention was a real joy to watch. Paulo did a lot of running and worked really hard. Jose did not prefer risking Bridge in this match when he saw Paulo was doing a decent job. Khalid was once again unlucky to go off with what looked like a dislocated shoulder (matter of weeks!?). Just when Essien was enjoying his return to midfield, he had to go back to central defence.
I felt that we defended the set pieces very poorly. Every time Norwich had the ball and crossed it in, they looked very dangerous. Against better oppositions, we might have conceded a goal or two, with this kind of set piece defending.
SWP scored again in a cup match. Still, I was not too happy with his performance. He over-does his skills, under-estimates his opponents and sometimes thinks he is superman. At times, he thinks a couple of moves ahead and in the process screws up the current move. He will excel in Chelsea only when he starts playing simple uncomplicated football.
Jose was very honest in his account of the match:
No doubt we deserved to win the game but 4-0 is a bit heavy for a team that fought like they did. They gave us a very difficult first-half and we were a bit lucky to be winning 1-0 because they defended quite well. The second-half, after the second goal, we had a lot of chances and a lot of space and I could rest players and start to think of the game next Wednesday.
Because the team is in a good moment, winning matches, confidence back, I thought I could give some rest to some players and left Carvalho and Makelele out of the team. I am always a bit afraid of these matches and I want to be protective. I want to have some important players on the pitch or bench in case I need to make an impact in the game. The first moment I felt the game was over, I took Didier and Lampard off.
Of course, Jose valued the Champions League match against Porto more than this one. He managed to give rest to Sheva, Drogba, Lampard, Essien and Carvalho while Cech, Terry and Diarra needed more minutes on the pitch. Talking about the pitch, you saw it today. Something needs to be done before we lose another player to a pointless injury. The next match at the Bridge is after a gap of one month which should give enough time for fixing things up.
Drogba scores again. Instead of a net-ripping full-blast goal, he chose a smart spin-flick that is typical of a fox-in-the-box striker. I dont quite like his new hairstyle. One out of the 100 reasons why I hate Adebayor is his stupid hairdo. Looks like Drogba has caught on to that kind. I hope he wipes this off. Sheva did as much as he could do in just 25 minutes. He set up an easy finish for Essien, the centre back and also scored a Milano style header from a well-timed Kalou cross. All those four goals were well earned but 4-0 should not mean that we crushed them or something.
To sum up, we played well enough to win and move to the FA cup quarterfinals, lost only one player to injury, have key players ready for the Porto match and if it interests you, Roman was at the Bridge!
____________________________________________________________
And some Scott Update:
Scott Sinclair scores once again for Plymouth in the FA Cup match against Derby. Nice to know that Chelsea FC has allowed Scott to play, if Plymouth is drawn against Chelsea in the FA Cup. See his header goal below:
