Afternoon all,
Well I got to say there are certain times in your life when you love to be proved wrong, and yesterdays match against Chelsea was one of those moments. My vitriolic rant the previous day was led by a sense of impending doom that Chelsea would use us as a springboard to turn around their on&off-field problems and continue on their title challenge. Boy oh boy was I wrong.
I've waited a day before posting as I actually wanted to see the match before blogging (it was on at 4 in the morning where I currently am) and I'm glad I did. What a performance. We outclassed a Chav side, who despite being on a losing streak, that have munched us in our encounters over the past few seasons. Cesc played at his best, no sign of the mental struggle he's been going through. Song looked dominant providing cover for our defence (as well as grabbing an important gal just before the break) and Walcott showed the form he was on at the beginning of the season before his injury.
It'll be interesting to see over the course of the second half of the season whether Walcott can displace Arshavin from an automatic starting spot. We'll always rotate our starters of course, but I think it'll be interesting to see which one of them will start in the first leg against Barcelona. Arshavin can be a genius when he shows up, but Walcott's pace is a scary scary thing for opposing teams. Especially when coupled with Cesc's eye for the perfect pass.
One thing which the match showed was how long it can take players to recover from bouts of malaria. Drogba had notched up 13 goals in 13 appearances against us before last night's match, however yesterday he looked so out of sorts you could have mistaken him for our diminutive Russian on his days when Andrey can't be bothered to show up. Let's not forget how long it took Toure to recover from his case of malaria when he was with us, lets all hope Drogba continues to suffer this drop in form for a few more months yet!
I'll skip over the transfer dross. Football journalists everywhere are making up reports left, right and centre. I'm always wary when you read the phrase "reports suggest that..." in a transfer article. Let's just wait and see. Hopefully we'll get another central defender, TV5 will take a while to get his match fitness back when he recovers and I'm sure we all hope that'll be in time for the first leg against Barca.
The Afterthought.
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