Our off the ball movement this game was better than the last game & this contributed to the goal. Sturridge & Lampard exchanged passes before Lampard went advancing forward, Sturridge passed the ball to Mata who beat a man & forced a central defender to come forward which meant Drogba was clear on goal. Mata did what he does best, slipped in a delightful through ball to Drogba whose finish was exquisite. What these stats do not show is the contribution of Lampard & Kalou to this goal. Lampard took a defender along with him as he went into an advancing position & Kalou stayed wide which made sure that there was created for Drogba. Kalou did what was asked of him, he stayed wide, was neat in possession without being his usual enigmatic self & his work rate was excellent.
Crossing & Set Piece delivery is an area which needs to be addressed. We had 35 crosses in the game but only 6 of them found a team-mate. Stoke had only 120 passes in the attacking half compared to Chelsea’s 398. It is often misunderstood that if the opposition offers nothing going forward, it makes your victory easy. In fact it is the opposite, Stoke city defended with 11 men(10 men after Fuller was sent off ) behind the ball & naturally we found it tough to break them down. Stoke’s defending from Set pieces & corners were abysmal. Unless the referee awards penalties for those, Stoke will not stop doing it. Despite all that,we kept on probing & eventually, the goal came, ensuring us 3 points.
We have moved in the right direction after recovering from the sacking of AVB which bodes well for the games coming up. We face Man City (A), Tottenham (H) & Aston Villa (A) next in the PL and we need players with right frame of mind & confidence to make sure that the minimum requirement of 4th place finish is achieved. For now, Bring on Napoli!
KTBFFH!
All of the stats from this article have been taken from the Opta Stats Centre at EPLIndex.com – Subscribe Now (Includes a author privileges!) See Demo’s and videos about the Stats Centre & read about new additions to the stats centre.
