Rip Roaring Potters

Potters at Chelsea – In The Eyes Of Mystical Descent

by northy on 08/03/10 at 10:46 pm

A fairly routine exit from the cup for the potters but nothing to be ashamed of at stamford bridge, the support were superb as usual and really filled the air  with a fair crack of noise. Here with his views on the game is regular rip roaring potters and oatcake messageboard correspondent mystical descent. Thanks for the review MD. Northy

Player Ratings:

Sorensen – 8 MotM – No chance on the goals, but pulled off some very impressive saves. Probably the only player we had on the pitch better than the Chelsea equivalent.

Wilkinson – 6 – Did his job, but never really excelled.

Faye – 6.5 – The Abdy that we all know and love at times, but still some silly mistakes and some good chances missed.

Huth – 6.5 – Pretty strong for the whole game and dominant in the air. Possiblysuspicious marking for the second.

Collins – 6 – Was neither good nor bad, but looked far more assured than usual.

Delap – 6 – Played all across the midfield, didn’t excel anywhere.

Whelan – 6 – No time to make a real impact before the injury hit.

Whitehead – 6 – Lots of energy as ever, but failed to really impose himself on the game.

Tuncay – 5 – Really, really poor. Never won the ball and gave it away every time he touched it.

Sidibe – 6 – Got marked out of the game by Mikel, struggling for fitness still.

Fuller – 7 – Created our only chance from open play. Didn’t see a lot of the ball, but never wasted it when he got it.

Pugh – 6 – Did a quiet job to little avail.

Lawrence – 6 – Didn’t do an awful lot once he came on, didn’t offer us the impetus that he has done in the past.

Kitson – 6 – Barely touched the ball.

I’m going to have to declare that I didn’t watch the game in person, instead settling for the inferior television view. As I’ve said in past reports, I’m not a fan of it and I believe that it impairs your view of the game. As I mentioned last week, sometimes you just have to admit that you were beaten by the better team. Today was one of those days, as Chelsea put in an efficient home performance that, while not slaughtering us, put us aside pretty easily. The difference between today’s Chelsea and the Chelsea we played earlier in the season was remarkable. That Chelsea side were shaky, off their game and thoroughly lacking in class. Although Chelsea won out in the end thanks to a cowardly second half refereeing performance, the game left me feeling embarassed that John Terry was the England captain and that Chelsea were the league’s flagship team. It was horrible to watch – 11 men surrounding the referee because he gave a foul throw against them, John Terry dramatically throwing himself to the floor feigning a facial injury in an attempt to get Sidibe sent off (Sidibe had been mauling him all game), Ballack mincing around the pitch screaming at the referee and diving and the antics of Ancelloti on the touchline. That Chelsea didn’t turn up today, but there’s a reason for that. Earlier in the season, we gave them a real shock and outplayed them, forcing them to scrape the bottom of the barrel and bring out the tactics that ruin football for everyone. Today it simply wasn’t necessary for them to be despicable. They got themselves in the lead in the first half and after that, we did very little to leave them overly concerned. We weren’t helped by the injury situation. The most important thing with our style of play is the get out ball. At its simplest, our play is about letting the opposition bring the ball to us, win it by the time they get to our final third and then play it to our get out ball. The get out ball relieves our defence, while allowing us to take the ball into the opposition half. When it is there, we either create a chance or win a set piece, allowing us to begin to exert pressure on the opposition. In recent times, we have had two get out balls. One of these is the long ball to the target man, who wins it in the air to knock it into the flanks for Fuller to run on to. The other of these is Etherington, who will quite happily pick up the ball a quarter of the way up the pitch and carry it all the way forwards. This tiny bit of variety has been enough to stop us getting found out. With no Etherington and Tuncay not living up to expectations, we’ve been left with just the one get out ball. Granted, it’s been a particularly effective one in the past few seasons, but with Sidibe’s fitness waning it’s not worked as well lately. There is another reason for this, though, which is why I’m more worried. Last season, Mark Hughes worked out that if you put a very tall, aerially strong player in a defensive midfield position with the single objective of marking Sidibe for the whole game, you can isolate Fuller with four defenders and effectively neutralise a large chunk of our attacking play. In their fourth game against us this season, a leftover from the Hughes era pointed this out to the out of his depth Mancini and the implemented it successfully. While Sidibe had a fine game away at Man City, he was suddenly struggling against them at home. Today, Chelsea picked up on this and had Mikel marking Sidibe throughout. Fuller got isolated and saw little of the ball, while Mama was heavily marked whenever the ball was in the air and soon looked exhausted. This was partly why Chelsea enjoyed so much possession and were able to spend so much of the game camped in our half.

Of course, it could easily have been so much different. We didn’t create much from open play, but every long throw caused havoc. Whitehead could, and perhaps should, have scored the opener as the ball fell to him on the edge of the box. Everyone in the middle was at panic stations, with Chelsea players realising the huge gap they’d left for him to have a shot through and with Stoke players moving out of the way. It was only Malouda who instinctively made his way to the goal line to find himself right in the way of Whitehead’s eventual shot. We had a brief spell of pressure in the first half and we were very unlucky not to take the lead. We didn’t really cause Chelsea too many troubles after this all-too-short attack and Chelsea eventually took the lead with a Lampard shot from the edge of the area. Some have said that we missed Ryan in the box and this is probably true, but that wasn’t the case with this goal. Somehow, Lampard gets on the end of about 5 or 6 balls that drop for him at the edge of the box following a set piece per game. He’s able to strike these fairly accurately with some power and as we saw today, it takes only the tiniest deflection for it to fly off into the net. With the amount of set pieces we get and the number where the ball just drops outside the box, I wonder why we don’t employ a system similar to this. We have Glenn Whelan who can hit a ball and he does hang around on the edge of the box, but they just don’t fall to him as they do to Lampard. I’m pretty sure that with a bit of work and coaching it’s a little threat that we could add to our set piece system, as 90% of it must be about positioning and anticipation.

After the goal, we were never out of the game and we were always competitive, but Chelsea were well on top. As with Arsenal last week, we struggled to win the ball off them and were put under constant pressure by their defence’s ability to push right up to the halfway line in an instant. It was impossible to put any real pressure on them when they had the ball, as they were capable of just shifting it to the nearest option while still pressing forwards. It wasn’t just the case of Chelsea having lots of possession but creating very few chances, as usually applies for our opposition. Anelka went through twice only to send the ball zipping past the post and Sorensen was called upon a few times to come out for one-on-ones and to make difficult saves. There’s not an awful lot you can say – we did our best against one of the best sides in the world, but ultimately it wasn’t enough to keep them out, especially not on their own patch. I suppose it was a bit of a sickener to concede not only from a set piece, but from another deflected attempt, this time from John Terry. The abuse that Terry received from the Stoke support was absolutely superb and it is a testament to our fans that yet again we went to a big four club and mustered up more abuse for one of their heroes than they could offer in his support, just like we did with the Androgynous Wonder at Manchester United’s Theme Park last year. Some quarters of the media have raved about Terry’s performance, but I wasn’t overly impressed. He was steady, if not a lot else, and while he got a goal, Alex was the player who stood out in the Chelsea defence. There was also some visible frustration as the Stoke fans stepped up the abuse, as he got himself a silly booking.

It is time, once again, to ponder the Tuncay situation. I have long advocated moving Tuncay onto the wing, but it just hasn’t come off yet. He struggles to get into the game, is invisible when the opposition have the ball, goes wandering all too often, has a heavy first touch and every time he touched the ball yesterday he gave it straight to a Chelsea player. If this fails, I’m not really sure what we can do. He’s not an out-and-out striker, like Fuller, so that option is ruled out. He doesn’t have the natural physical presence or atheleticism to perform the target man role and so short of a complete system overhaul, that is also a non-starter. Given that the role of our central midfield is primarily a defensive one, that means that the only logical place in the team for Tuncay is out wide, where we are told he has experience of playing in the past. Why it isn’t working, I don’t know. Perhaps it’s because he’s out on the left but is right footed, and so his insistence on bringing the ball inside and on to his stronger foot often sees him lose it. It could be a fitness issue – certainly he’s not looked the same player that he was in the Fulham game since he went off with that hamstring injury. Maybe it’s because he’s being expected to be a pacey, tricky winger in the Etherington mould, carrying the ball from the back to the front, something that restricts his ability to create around the edge of the box. If this is the case, then it is worth persevering with this experiment for a little while yet, as with Tuncay on the right and Etherington on the left, we may see Tuncay having a mini-revelation. As for the rest of the team, we’ve just got to keep our heads up and move on to another tricky game this Saturday (Don’t forget the burnley game wednesday!Northy). Our squad is down to the bare bones at the minute, but this current first team is good enough to give anybody a game at home. Let’s just hope for no niggly injuries and make sure we don’t get involved in any stupid incidents that could see us hit with yet another suspension. The cup run is over now, but we mustn’t neglect the league, we’ve still got a job to do.

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