Gooooooooal

By Tom Bason
January 5 2011

I never thought I'd see the day. Wolves 1 Chelsea 0. The champions dispatched at Molineux. Obviously it happened in January 2004 as well, but as that was quite a while ago I'll focus on tonight's game.

First of all, the starting line-up. I wasn't best pleased when I saw it; unless Kevin Doyle or Stephen Fletcher dropped back into the midfield, I thought we'd be overrun in there. And to an extent, that happened. In the second half especially, Michael Essien had plenty of time to play. If Dave Edwards or Kevin Foley pushed forward to close him down, that left Ramires or Frank Lampard in space. If the wide men then tucked inside, Ashley Cole and Jose Boswinga had plenty of space to run into down the flank.

But, playing two strikers meant that Branislav Ivanovic and John Terry were easily closed down by Fletcher and Doyle, and stopped Chelsea bringing the ball out. And you can't fault the work rate of Stephen Hunt and Matt Jarvis on the flanks; they used up plenty of energy to track Cole and Boswinga, and as a result Chelsea were starved of width. At times though, they managed to work two on one situations on our fullbacks and led to one or two hairy moments as they reached the byline.

And what of the defence? A defence without a clean sheet until December has now kept three in five matches. Annoyingly, those breaches were against fellow strugglers Wigan and West Ham, but that's typical Wolves. Christophe Berra and Richard Stearman headed everything away, and it was noticeable that Didier Drogba was kept reasonably quiet except for a well worked second half shot that hit the outside of the post. George Elokobi and Ronald Zubar had temporary personality changes; at one point I was sure we had Roberto Carlos and Carlos Alberto at fullback. Zubar's effort in the first few minutes was excellent.

Further forward, all played well. I was disappointed Nenad Milijas was left out, and felt he could have been introduced a little earlier to try and keep possession. But, Edwards' energy knows no bounds, while Foley is improving as a midfielder - maybe he could have been withdrawn for Milijas. And upfront, the partnership between Fletcher and Doyle is improving, although had Fletcher released Doyle in the second half, the margin of victory could have been greater. 

For all the negative press, and there will be lots of criticism of Chelsea, I didn't they played that badly. We stopped them building from the back, but I'd argue that they played better tonight than in the first contest at Stamford Bridge. Florent Malouda and Salomon Kalou caused problems in the first half, and Lampard looked sharp despite clearly not being fully fit. If I was a Chelsea fan, I'd be slightly worried by the problems Doyle and Fletcher caused Terry and Ivanovic and the lack of calmness in front of goal - Wayne Hennessey barely had a save to make.

And finally, my dad's an Everton fan. On February 10th last season, he joined at Molineux to see the victory over Tottenham. That night, Everton beat Chelsea 2-1, and we had a great night in our house. He came with me tonight, and we joked that we needed those same scores tonight - a brilliant night for both of us.