Season’s review…so far

Sunderland: This loss was down to nothing more than Paulo playing Center Half, most calamitous decision of the season. The Absence of our first choice centre backs . It’s worthy to note that Yury almost gave us an early lead in his last game till date with a run even better than Onuoha’s. Lastly, no Essien.

Birmingham: Playing an injured Alex, 30-something shots that wouldn’t just go in and Kalou being Kalou or Kalou-less as the Chelsea Fancast crew would say. Still no Essien.

Newcastle: Conceded a silly goal courtesy an error from the same injured player (Mikel and Petr Cech also took part in this comedy of errors), who should have been recovering from surgery by this point. Still no Essien, heads had dropped and confidence was low.

Everton: Ferreira at fault for a late goal. I’m sorry but I don’t think he should be playing high level games. Either way there’s nothing wrong with a draw against Everton. Essien was back for this one and Drogba scored his first goal for Chelsea in this fixture since his effort against Arsenal on October 3rd.

Tottenham: Lampard’s return. Chelsea showed a marked improvement in the second half with Drogba and Lampard coming off the bench, with the former scoring an equalizer in a 1-1 draw, but unfortunately missing a stoppage time penalty to clinch three points.

Arsenal: A pretty balanced game until we decided to start the second half with a high defensive line against Theo Walcott and managed to give the ball away, twice! This was not the Chelsea of last season.

Bolton: Poor first half, similar to what we’ve seen recently. If the offside had been called and we didn’t score, the alleged crisis talk would have gained even more momentum.

Anyone who watched the second half of the Bolton game would’ve noticed one major thing. We were able to “play our football”, something the boss has stressed in recent weeks. Good passing, good movement, Cole’s marauding runs and most of all, confidence, were clearly visible. Looking like the old Chelsea, the ‘crisis’ is gone. It’s not a coincidence that our first league win in ages has come when Lampard is back in the side. He’s our best attacking midfielder, gives us lots of goals and understands the attackers better than anyone else. One only needs to look to the pass he gave Drogba before the Ivorian hit the upright to see that he’s what we’ve been missing.

I look forward to the remainder of the season and hope we can also make signings to bolster our squad for now and the future, and also involve our young players more as against playing players out of position.

Follow Latoye on Twitter – @BuffyCFC