Man City 2-0 Chelsea: Toothless team led by a clueless manager!

Chelsea lost to Manchester City this afternoon and as a team looked toothless, being led by a Manager in Rafa Benitez who to put it mildly in one word is CLUELESS!

To compound our misery, Frank Lampard missed the chance to score his 200th Chelsea goal as Joe Hart guessed right and saved down to his right hand side to deny Lampard with the score being 0-0.

Apart from the Lampard penalty, Chelsea never looked like scoring and played the first half at a snail’s pace in possession. Chelsea hardly moved out of first gear and couldn’t keep hold of the ball. Giving it away time and time again, we allowed City to impose their game on us.

The second half started brighter for Chelsea but again failed to make any sort of impression in and around the City box. Demba Ba was brought down by Joe Hart but as I said, Lampard couldn’t convert the penalty. Shortly after, a counter attack down the right saw Ivanovic and Ramires create a two on one chance to attack City but today Ramires’ touch was awful!

City hit Chelsea with two goals from Yaya Toure and Carlos Tevez and could have had more as Sergio Aguero’s touch let him down twice. In comparison, Chelsea were toothless in this one and it provided a glimpse of the gulf in quality between the two sides. City had plenty more options than Chelsea.

Questions need to be asked of the Manager once more after this. To start with, John Terry was dropped to the bench in favour of a starting combination of Gary Cahill (who was our man of the match) and David Luiz.

If Terry was fit enough to be named on the bench, he should be starting and it’s as simple as that as far as I am concerned. When we found ourselves up against it, we needed JT in there barking his orders and giving people a shove to get going! Instead, we never had that.

Once again Rafa’s substitutions need to be addressed. City scored on around 60 mins. At that moment he needed to change it and to me it was obvious that Demba Ba wasn’t getting much of a look in and Ramires had one of his bad days.

The solution should have been Torres for Ba and Moses for Ramires. Instead, he takes off Frank Lampard for Oscar and Hazard for Moses!

Surely Hazard needed to remain on the pitch because he has the ability to change the game in an instant. Alongside Mata and Moses, that would have been the better combination at that point in the game, or am I wrong here?

The final substitution he makes is to take off Mikel for Torres, move David Luiz forward into the middle of midfield, Ramires to right back and Torres up with Ba. It was all too little too late!

Before the game, Benitez was talking about finishing in the top two! We now face a wait until tomorrow night to see if we have slipped down to fourth behind Tottenham, depending on their result against West Ham tomorrow!

Chelsea needed to turn up for this one on the pitch and on the sidelines. They did neither! As a team we looked too slow in possession, happy to sit back and let City have the ball rather than press them and paid for it.

Chelsea were toothless as a team being led by clueless manager and it is really as simple as that!

Carefree & KTBFFH