VILLA 0-1 Chelsea: unbeaten run ends, but fight for fourth remains intact

By: Chris | February 22nd, 2009

I’m not going to go into too much detail about yesterday’s game because I seem to have watched it through some kind of wormhole, if Match of the Day’s analysis was anything to go by. From where I was sitting, i.e. in the stadium, we just about shaded the game despite Chelsea’s pretty passing, and were unlucky not to get a point.

Alan Hansen’s view was that Chelsea’s peformance was “excellent”, but I left the ground thanking the footballing gods that I don’t have to watch that possession-intensive, time-wasting boring shite every week. Hopefully for Chelsea fans it was just a means to an end in a tough first game for a clever new manager.

Don’t get me wrong, Villa did not dominate, nor did we deserve three points. There were some glaring weaknesses in our side. Worryingly, Curtis Davies was the most obvious.

However, there are complaints to be made about Chelsea’s conduct and, more importantly, about the so-called referee who let them get away with it. Let’s be honest, we’d all time-waste for an hour at 1-0 if we were allowed to.

How Petr Cech did not get booked for constant time-wasting after Nicolas Anelka had put Chelsea ahead would baffle me. I would be confused as to how Frank Lampard was allowed to take an age over each corner, and Jose Bosingwa and Paulo Ferreira were allowed to delay every throw in, usually grabbing an extra ten yards while doing so. I would be surprised that twice yesterday Chelsea got away with horrible and cynical body-checks.

I would be shocked at all that. If the game hadn’t been refereed by Mark Halsey, the pug-nosed fuckwit who has made a career out of screwing the Villa over and hugging and shaking hands with Didier Drogba and the like during matches.

Anyway, we dropped to fourth and could have been very close to Arsenal, but Sunderland went to the Emirates and got a draw. I reckon we’re still in the driving seat for fourth, and we got away unscathed with our loss yesterday.