Reaction: Chelsea 1-4 Atletico Madrid
It was a complete humiliation to watch the Blues crumble at the hands of Radamel Falcao and company, and it my opinion it doesn’t matter if the game carries prestige or not, every defeat hurts regardless of the competition. The feelings were pretty much summed up by the look on John Terry’s face at the end of the match, he didn’t even play in the game due to suspension but was visibly gutted.
However, it was refreshing to see some of the players holding their hands up and accepting responsibility for this one. Ashley Cole tweeted:
“Well that was a lesson, absolute joke no fight, desire, passion, and a big reality check!!!!!! #sorrycfcfans.”
Whilst our goal-scorer Cahill shared a similar sentiment:
“We approach every game in the same way. It was a massive game and we let ourselves down and passed up a great opportunity.
“It is difficult. Obviously we will look to bounce back in the league as this was unacceptable.”
Everything went wrong from the off. Falcao hit the bar in the fourth minute but Chelsea didn’t heed the warning and he opened the scoring two minutes later and it only took the former Porto forward one half of football to earn his hat-trick, effectively putting the tie to bed.
It’s always easy to judge things in hindsight but there was no real shape to Chelsea yesterday and I don’t believe this is a problem with the formation, only those that were asked to play in it. Despite having the extra deep midfielder the Madrid side went through us with ease as Frank Lampard constantly abandoned his position as he ran into the space the likes of Juan Mata and Eden Hazard are meant to occupy. Not only was he treading on their toes by doing this, he didn’t offer any threat going forward and left John Obi Mikel, only player to have a decent game, to do all the midfield work alone. Perhaps we should have lined up as we did against Newcastle which has been our best showing of the season so far.
But the area that will come under the most criticism is the defence. Branislav Ivanovic being the worst offender as he put in his worst ever performance in a Chelsea shirt. As for David Luiz…words fail me but his night was summed up by attempting a clearance with a backheel. We were clearly missing our captain and leader in this area of the field.
We didn’t offer any sort of threat going forward as we barely saw the likes of Mata and Hazard, whilst Ramires continues to struggle to find the form he showed last season and Fernando Torres was an isolated figure.
The game was extremely frustrating but we still have a few new faces to integrate into the side and hopefully this will help solve some of the problems. If we’re focussing on the positives, we’re still top of the Premier League and Roberto Di Matteo has some time to think things over during the international break to make sure we do not put in that sort of performance again.