SOCCER: PAUL HAYWARDon how Chelsea haven't stopped scoring since owner Abramovich delivered his scolding
ACCORDING TO reliable sources, the scolding Roman Abramovich gave his players after the Champions League defeat by Internazionale left egos bruised and eyebrows singed. Chelsea’s owner is no closer to winning Europe’s shiniest prize but at least one demand has been met. This has been a caviar campaign for goals.
With the 3-0 FA Cup semi-final win against Aston Villa at the weekend Chelsea broke their all-time record in all competitions. The 122 struck in 50 games prior to this tussle with Bolton surpassed the 121 scored in 56 fixtures in 1964-65. With 84 in the Premier League, Carlo Ancelotti’s men had already smashed their previous best of 72 in that competition. The Chelsea coach seems bemused by this deluge, as if it came, like snow, one night, while he was sleeping.
Italian managers are not bred to chase goals, of course. They are taught to seek control, to throw a rug over the opposition. But Ancelotti’s Chelsea are a goal machine. Sunderland and Villa have been on the wrong end of seven-goal avalanches.
It may not follow from this increase in fire-power that they are more entertaining. There is, though, an extra thrill to be felt from seeing Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka in the same starting XI, as they were last night, and from the blossoming of Florent Malouda, who has savaged many full backs and has been the best wide player in the league in this campaign.
Salomon Kalou has also improved, in bursts, and his reward for a fine cameo against Villa on Saturday was a starting place against Bolton.
Malouda, who came on for Anelka on 67 minutes, was held back for Saturday’s visit to Spurs, but Drogba and his French accomplice were deemed a good bet to threaten Bolton’s combative defenders.
Ancelotti lost faith in this pairing of superior centre forwards for a while but was rewarded for restoring the arrangement when Drogba curled a cross from the outside-left position three minutes before half-time for Anelka to open the scoring with his head.
Another notable statistic is that this was Abramovich’s 200th Stamford Bridge game as Chelsea’s owner. The oligarch has grown a white beard waiting for his team to regain domestic power and win him a Champions League title.
Come to think of it, he looks more like Ken Bates every day. Frequently accused of interfering in team affairs with his sackings and appointments, Abramovich can claim vindication for last month’s lecture to the troops in their march to the brink of a League and FA Cup double.
More fun has been an Abramovich edict since the Jose Mourinho years. Fine manager though he is, Avram Grant was never likely to deliver thigh-slapping football and Luiz Felipe Scolari misjudged the defensive requirements of the set-piece league as well as failing to adapt to the gruelling nature of the schedule. Guus Hiddink returned to Mourinho’s core strengths with a small attacking twist. Ancelotti’s challenge was to draw more from the under-achievers, Malouda and Kalou, and find a way to make Drogba and Anelka mesh. Those two have struck 45 times between them and Frank Lampard has added a healthy 22.
Abramovich has observed a 71 per cent win ratio here at the Bridge and only nine defeats, so he can be satisfied with the returns as he sits up there on his plinth. Some of those years he has sabotaged with his cliques and his impatience, but this time all he needed to do was turn his fire on the players instead of the unfortunates who have carried the can for their failure to win the Premier League since 2006.
Anelka must have been in the owner’s cross-hairs when he vented his feelings last month after the 1-0 home defeat by Inter.
Torpor on the pitch had been one irritation and rock star conduct between games was starting to function as spiritual dry rot. But to reassert their influence Chelsea had only to get themselves knocked out of Europe by the coach [Mourinho] who turned them from nearly men to champions, and then wait for United to stagger.
To hasten that process, Chelsea had a free week to prepare for their 2-1 win at Old Trafford four days after Alex Ferguson’s men had fallen to Bayern Munich.
This season has shone white light on the continuing difficulty of competing on two such big fronts.
Odd to think that after the Inter game people were predicting the break-up of this “ageing” Chelsea side. In the five games since then the Chelsea Pensioners put five past Portsmouth, seven past Villa and scored another three against Martin O’Neill’s side en route to an FA Cup final against Pompey, the club they could not hang.
