Match reaction: Chelsea 0-1 QPR
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.