A Little Hoarse!

….is the sound of my voice, after 90 minutes of cheering on Mourinho’s ‘little horse’ at Stamford Bridge, yesterday afternoon.

The early kick off at Anfield may have been partially responsible for the state of my vocal chords.  Liverpool was hosting Arsene Wenger’s League topping side.  I was in my bedroom preparing for my visit to Stamford Bridge (layering thermals!) knowing the battle between the first and fourth place teams was about to kick off when I heard the familiar ‘boing’ of my husband’s Fotmob app on his phone, heralding a ‘goal’.   Surely the app must have confused it’s ‘kick off’ sound with the ‘goal’ one.   The match was being televised on BT Sport and I had to urge my other half to find me a stream asap –apologies to feminists out there but I am definitely dependent on his cyber prowess, especially as I am a technological ‘little donkey’!  Sure enough when the stream began the score line was already 1-0 to Liverpool after two and a half minutes of play (I later discovered Martin Skrtel  had scored from a Gerrard free kick in the first minute of the match).  The next nineteen minutes were possibly the most exhilarating burst of football I have had the privilege of watching during live play.  It felt like I was watching the highlights of the game on MOTD.  A rattled Arsenal struggled to settle against a surging Liverpool side that had raced out of the blocks and was relentless in it’s attack.  Twenty minutes into the first half Liverpool were already 4-0 up.  The match ended 5-1 and Mingolet was denied a clean sheet when Arsenal was awarded a 68 minute penalty – hardly a consolation.  The final score could have been 8 or 9 in favour of Brendan Rodger’s boys, had Suarez not hit the post and Sturridge and Sterling squandered a few easy chances.  The SAS (Suarez and Sturridge) strike partnership was not only firing on all cylinders but was joined by a couple of other ‘S’s – Skrtel scored two goals as did Raheem Stirling, who narrowly missed out on a hat-trick.  I’ll stop going on about it but I would urge you to try and watch at least the first twenty minutes of the game if you missed it.  I fear Liverpool is definitely joining the three horse race (two and a half according to Jose!).

So having shouted my head off at four goals shooting past Szczesny in 20 minutes, I headed off to Stamford Bridge in the knowledge that a win against Newcastle would see Chelsea leap frog Arsenal in the table. Whether we then went on to top the table would depend on Norwich City’s ability to contain Manuel Pellegrini’s no longer invincible side.

My older daughter, who was unamused at being dragged out of bed at 1 pm, accompanied me.  She had been very keen on going with me prior to her Friday night out.  She was ‘hanging’ and got even more disgruntled when a steward took away her bottle of water which she was sucking on as we entered the stadium.  We got to our seats in time to see Petr Cech receiving an award from Peter Bonetti to mark his record breaking clean sheet achievement.  As we waited for the teams to come through the tunnel, I stuffed an extra strong mint into my daughter’s mouth in order to mask her alcohol breath – but she rightly pointed out that we were surrounded by fans with ‘beer breath’!!

There were two changes from the starting line-up that beat Manchester City last Monday night, JT and Ramires were given a well-deserved rest (first league game this season where John Terry hasn’t led the team out), probably in anticipation of our midweek clash with West Brom.  David Luiz moved back into his centre half role alongside Gary Cahill, Frank Lampard came back into midfield and Oscar joined Willian and Hazard behind Eto’o. 

Newcastle United, who have been cast in the role of a club in crisis in the aftermath of the derby defeat by Sunderland and the departure of director of football Joe Kinnear and star player Johan Cabaye, started the game well.  In the absence of their suspended striker Loic Remy, Moussa Sissoko and Hatem Ben Arfa created chances that forced saves from Petr Cech, making the ‘little horse’ look vulnerable.

It wasn’t long before the ‘little horse’ found its feet and surged ahead thanks to the dancing feet of the talented young Belgian Eden Hazard. An energised Branislav Ivanovic, buoyed from his winning goal at the Etihad, return passed the ball to the feet of the Belgian International who had made one of his signature runs into the box, enabling him to score the first goal of the match. A few minutes later, Hazard impressively combined with Samuel Eto’o to score his second of the afternoon and  in the second half the Belgian converted a penalty awarded by referee Howard Webb, achieving his first hat-trick for Chelsea (I was thrilled to discover that as well as Thorgan, Eden has two more brothers – imagine four Hazards in our team!!). Mohamed Salah made his debut in the last 10 minutes of the game.  Although he showed promise, nerves got to him and he was unable to finish a couple of good chances.


As Howard Webb's whistle signalled our 3-0 victory, the distinctive voice of Neil Barnett boomed over the tannoy, announcing that Norwich City had held Manchester City to a 0-0 draw at Carrow Road.
 
The ‘little horse’ was top of the table!

For those of you who don’t understand the references to ‘little horse’ they resulted from Mourinho’s words when being pressed on Chelsea’s chances as title contenders.  The canny Portugese manager continuously insists his side are not serious title contenders this season:

“The title race is between two horses and a little horse that needs milk and needs to learn how to jump, maybe next season we can race!”

Pellegrini responded: “little, but very rich!”

That’s ‘rich’ coming from him!!