Bottom of the league QPR managed to pull of one of the shocks of this season by beating neighbours Chelsea 1-0 at Stamford Bridge tonight, a result which has stunned the Blues faithful.
To compound matters it was former Chelsea player Shaun Wright-Phillips who earned the three points for the visitors with his second half goal and giving them their first away win in the league since 19/11/11 against Stoke City.
We got away with one early in the game when Marko Marin, making his first Premier League club, was lucky not to be dismissed for lunging in at QPR’s Stephane Mbia. But that’s where Chelsea’s luck ended.
Rafa Benitez will be criticised for the amount of changes he made to the side, it seemed to have a detrimental effect, but we’ve not previously had many opportunities to rest players which is arguably crucial, especially as we’ve used less players than our rivals and have done a lot of travelling this winter. And I still maintain the XI on the pitch should have been able to beat a side sitting at the arse end of the Premier League table.
We had plenty of opportunities, we had them on the ropes, but lacked the killer instinct required to capitalise. We dominated the ball with around 64% possession, earned 14 corners, over a dozen free kicks, had 13 shots (2 on target, tells a story in itself) – none of that matters when your opponent works harder than you do.
Most of the anger of Chelsea’s fans seems to have been directed at Benitez for his team selection and delay to bring Juan Mata onto the field and Fernando Torres, who didn’t show the sort of display that would intimidate the likes of Chelsea bound Demba Ba. In truth their were several poor performers out there, including Frank Lampard, David Luiz, Oscar and Victor Moses – none of whom will be impressed by their own efforts today.
At this stage it’s hard to be objective through the anger and perhaps I’m just venting at this stage but this surely isn’t good enough considering the opposition.
I’m particularly disappointed at this result as a Chelsea fan. Could somebody please tell Rafa that too much team rotation and underating of the opposition would only create more enemnty between him and the Standford Bridge faithful and would ultimately cost him his job before mid February. Why on earth must bench Mata and Hazard.
What in the Fu is this ? To QPR?
Having most of the possession,passing it around too much and minimal balls to the striker reminds me of Di Matteo’s days. How many clear cut chances did we have? Moses failing to reach the ball for a certain tap in goal,Torres’ strike straight at Julio César and a few Ivanovic headers is all I can think of. To have all that possession and creating that amount of chances is a serious problem but I understand that QPR sat back very deep. I noticed how the defenders positioned their bodies when SWP took the shot for his goal. They all just jumped and turned their backs on him before he kicked the ball. How can you intercept a shot when you can’t see it? That’s very poor and that just tells you how weak players have become over the years,especially when you look at diving.
I agree, Zane.
We were poor in a few key areas on the pitch. Torres was awful and his movement only seemed to benefit the QPR defence. During an Oscar run, Torres moved towards him and brought some defenders and effectively cut off any avenue Oscar had.
Midfield were poor defensively yesterday. Luiz is an airhead but hasn’t played their much, but Lampard is experienced and should have put himself between SWP and the ball for the goal. Can’t let midfielders take pot shots at your defence.
That was a criminal selection from Rafa and I hope the sooner he gets the boot the better for us!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAH
I think what he had done was overall, the correct decision.
I’d rather rotate the squad and give other players a chance than let important players burn out mid way during the season. Mata is our best player arguably and yet he hadn’t had any rest since September I believe, he needed that rest.
I agree with you that we should have beaten QPR, we obviously don’t have the depth we think we do if we don’t perform without first team players. Watching the match highlights I kind of thought it was more of a cup game than anything, the players didn’t really take their chances because they didn’t take it that seriously and no one other than SWP went for the jugular.
I don’t quite get why we signed Marin, it baffles me. When I had some research about him, while playing alongside Ozil he looked promising. However, spending £7 million for someone who was struggling to get into form for Werder Bremen after being injured doesn’t make sense. Whenever he receives the ball for Chelsea he doesn’t justify spending that kind of money on him over another player like Holtby (who is now going to Spurs)or even Shaxiri because we had signed Marin on a pre contract near the end of the season. Often he slips into anonymity during games, it took a minute for 19 year old Piazon to get an assist and yet Marin has none so far, why didn’t we play him instead? Rant over.