(

Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Swansea City 1 Chelsea 1: match report

Good fortune was smiling on Chelsea, although the point that was salvaged in stoppage time came at a cost. Trailing to Scott Sinclair's wonderful first-half goal and down to 10 men after Ashley Cole picked up a second yellow card for a lunge on Nathan Dyer, Chelsea looked devoid of ideas and were on the brink of a sixth league defeat of the season until José Bosingwa's cross deflected off Neil Taylor to leave Michel Vorm stranded.Swansea were denied their second successive Premier League scalp in the most cruel of ways after Scott Sinclair’s opener against his former club was cancelled out by a deflected Jose Bosingwa shot that secured a point for Chelsea.

In what was very much a game of two halves, Swansea dominated the first yet Chelsea deserved their eventual equaliser after completely ruling the home team out of the game in the second half.

The visitors were without a string of key players with John Terry, Frank Lampard and Ramires all missing through injury whilst Didier Drogba and Salomon Kalou were both still away for international duty. Gary Cahill was forced to wait yet another game for his debut despite the absence of his England international team mate, Terry.It was only a 90-minute snapshot of a 38-game Premier League season but, on this evidence, Roman Abramovich selected the wrong Jose Mourinho protégé. Yes, Chelsea snatched a deflected equaliser but the dominant theme of another uplifting occasion at the Liberty Stadium was Swansea’s wonderfully slick passing football.

Brendan Rodgers, former Chelsea reserve team manager, continues to extract considerably more flair from Swansea than Andre Villas-Boas, Mourinho’s ex-scout, is coaxing from the supposed superstars at Stamford Bridge. A one-dimensional Chelsea


performance was further marred by the dismissal of Ashley Cole, who collected two bookings and will now miss Sunday’s Premier League match against Manchester United.

No comments:

Post a Comment