Samuel Eto’o only started Chelsea’s clash against Tottenham at Stamford Bridge because Fernando Torres suffered an injury during the warm up but the Cameroonian made the most of the opportunity and proved to be a thorn in the visitors’ side…not bad for an old man.
The striker was brought down by Hugo Lloris in the opening minutes and the Frenchman would have received his marching orders then, only for the linesman to wrongly flag Eto’o offside. Moments later he almost picked up an assist when he put Eden Hazard through, who beat Lloris, but couldn’t find the target when you’d normally put your house on him to score in similar situations.
If Chelsea and Eto’o started with a bang then what followed for the remainder of the second half was most definitely a lull as Tim Sherwood’s odd choice of an XI looked to be frustrating the home side.
Fortunately, in the second half, Spurs kindly gave Chelsea a helping hand when Jan Verthonghen (it couldn’t happen to a nicer bloke) slipped before expertly picking out the oncoming Eto’o, who slotted the ball home and put the Blues in the driving seat. Four minutes later he was in the thick of it again when Younes Kaboul was judged to have brought him down in the box and was promptly sent off – Hazard dispatching the resulting spot-kick.
Kaboul may be forgiven for feeling a little hard done by and the post-match analysis seems to surround his controversial dismissal which suits the anti-Chelsea narrative, so let’s continue to pretend that Lloris wouldn’t have seen red if the officials had done their job properly in the first place and Sandro didn’t do enough to get himself sent off several times over during the course of the ninety.
Demba Ba came on and enjoyed a short cameo in which he scored a brace, the first came after a comedy of errors on Sandro’s part but the Spurs capitulation wasn’t done there as England’s finest right-back Kyle Walker was generous enough to head the ball far enough away from Lloris to allow Ba to beat him to the punch.
When,ba should be given more chance to prove his worth.