Chelsea v/s Birmingham City (PREM 12 August 2007)

First match of the Premier League and a chance to better the 63 match unbeaten home record set by Liverpool a long long time back :) . Just an opportunity to erase Liverpool from the record books makes the match spicy enough to satisfy our taste buds :D

Now let us look at the Chelsea starting line up for the match

Chelsea (4-4-2): Cech; Johnson, Ben-Haim, Carvalho, A Cole; Wright-Phillips, Essien, Lampard (c), Malouda; Pizarro, Kalou.


what !!!! Chelsea Back to the very conventional 4-4-2 wow looks interesting :) and with Essien and Malouda on the wings looks interesting :) but still boy where is Joe Cole :( arent we losing out on the best creative player of our team ...hmmm

Now what about the Birmingham lineup

Birmingham City(4-5-1): Doyle; Kelly, Ridgewell (c), Djourou, Queudrue; Larsson, Muamba, Kapo, nafti, McSheffrey; Forssell.

I cannot make any comments on this lineup :( Frankly,I dont know much about this lineup but yes Forssell was with Chelsea some time ago .

Looks like City are gonna go for a very defensive game ,so scoring goals will be difficult especially with our last seasons top scorer on the bench .

Let the match begin ,

The first 15 minutes were very interesting , I could see a very new Chelsea side with lots of fire . never saw them goining for the kill from the moment they touched the ball .. wow Chelsea looks good and Wright Phillips is on fire his runs were very strong and deceptive , and yup this time his passes also looked very good ,Not something I associate with Wright Phillips :P .

Chelsea attacked again and again but couldnt find the finishing we normally have :(.. but the runs from Malouda ,Kalou,Pizzaro and Phillips looked good .

It almost looked like a very one sided match when Birmingham won a free kick in our half . and somehow Forssel scores from a Ridgewell free kick :( .Oh God is our Dream shattered
but within 3 minutes we were level courtesy Pizzaro and to some extend Doyle after some very good work again from Wright phillips :) .

We continued the attacking play and got our reward when Malouda scored from close range .He definetly looks like a great but with 2 goals from 2 games wow :) .

Again we are on the attack but Lampard couldnt get hold of the ball after some very good work by Pizzaro and Kalou :( we should have been 3-1 up by now .

Within minutes from nowhere Lightning stuck at Stanford Brigde .Birmingham levelled from a
thunderous strike from Kapo .wow that was a beauty .but I would say johnson should have stopped him .

10 more minutes to Half time Chelsea are on the attack again but cannot find a goal .again a Kalou effort was saved by Doyle .

Half Time . Scoreline 2-2 CHELSEA wouldnt like anything other than a win from this match
at this point my Dad snatches the remote from my HAND (well he is an Arsenal fan) and finds Arsenal are trailing 0-1 at the Emirates he he ..but not a new siuation for them they normally dont score early at the Emirates :P but somehow manage to get a Draw atleast .. Now dads really pissed dont think I can watch the rest of the Chelsea encounter :(

So I wouldnt be able to describe about the second half :( ,but somehow I managed to see the Essien goal :) wow thats what Essien can do when he comes forward and he doenst have any Defensive duties to handle :) .. He is a true asset to our expensively assembled Chelsea Line up .

I managed to read Live scores of the match on BBC -Sports :) .I was really very happy when I read the final score line 3-2 to Chelsea .and yup Liverpool ,bye bye .

Vital Players :(Chelsea)

Wright Phillips : The Best player today :) .hope he continues with such performances through out the season .

Pizarro : Looks really sharp .I want to see how he plays alongside Shevchenko , without Kalou and Drogba for the later part of the seson these 2 have to get along well :)

Malouda : Looked really strong .he looks like a really good buy...hope he continues playing like this for Chlesea

The Only weak link I found in Our Team was our Right Back - Johnson looked really bad defensively but when he comes forward he looked good ... I think Paulo is better than him and if Alves gets into our team it would be great :).

I just wondered if Wright Phillips was taller - then we could send those long balls to him and if he plays like today .He could be better than Ronaldo :)

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PREM Goal scorers (Chelsea)

Pizarro - 1 Goal
Malouda - 1 Goal
Essien -1 Goal