Match reports The Times, Matt Hughes: “Grant’s team continued their dogged pursuit of Manchester United and Arsenal with a ninth successive victory in all competitions that equals the club record. Michael Ballack’s first-half header was all that separated the teams on the scoresheet, although in terms of ability the gap was wider than the grandest of [...]
It’s not often you see the world’s all-time greatest footballer loitering down at Chelsea’s training ground (Andy Myers left before we moved there, after all). Argentine legend Diego Maradona popped in to see the boys at Cobham this week, possibly keeping an eye on new signing Franco Di Santo, the latest of Maradona’s countrymen [...]
Match reports The Observer, Jamie Jackson: “Chelsea will take the three easy points from this outing against dire opposition, but will be cursing the straight arm that late substitute Michael Essien offered Kenny Miller in added time. The Ghana midfielder was sent off and Avram Grant faces the loss of a key player for three games. [...]
Match reports The Independent, Conrad Leach: “It usually takes decades to build up an enmity on the scale that now exists between these two teams, but in their case it only took one match. That was last October, when Stephen Hunt accidentally collided with Petr Cech, his knee hitting the Chelsea goalkeeper in the head. It [...]
Match reports Daily Telegraph, Henry Winter: “In the festive season of a thousand toasts, the poignant salute at Stamford Bridge yesterday was to absent friends. Chelsea would never have dropped two points had their commanding centre-half, John Terry, been present and the captain’s imminent operation to shave a disc in his back cannot come soon enough. [...]
The second of Chelsea’s four games in ten days sees them take on Reading at Stamford Bridge. Serious injuries to Blues goalkeepers Petr Cech and Carlo Cudicini overshadowed the reverse fixture in October. Stephen Hunt’s challenge on Cech divided opinion but the majority felt that he could have avoided leaving Cech with a fractured skull. A hostile atmosphere [...]
At first I thought Jose Mourinho was overreacting, and of course I knew immediately that his line about Petr Cech being “lucky” was the one the press would zero in on. Whether Mourinho knew, at the time of the interview, that Cech had a fractured skull I couldn’t say. It was a good two hours [...]
