Sunday 14th
April from Wembley Stadium:
Chelsea 1 – 2 Man
City
Wembley Stadium, despite its fiery red interior, has become
a second home to Chelsea (and Drogba) in recent years. I have come to admire ‘the
new’ Wembley now as the pitch has improved dramatically from a few years ago. We
also have a tendency to come away from the ground with some silverware.
To get from the modern station to the stadium a walk down Wembley
Way is required. The three stages of Wembley Way are designed specifically to
entice football fans. Stage one is a greasy spoon café. Fans get the
opportunity to start the day with a fry up, tea in a polystyrene cup, a read of
a weathered tabloid paper and the view of two overweight men discussing the
pending game. Stage two is the bookies. There are a ridiculous amount of
bookmakers down Wembley Way, all waiting to take advantage of your optimism and
silently laugh when you put £2 on your team to win 6-0. The third stage is of
course the pub. The idea is to drink, sing, talk football and repeat. Once the
three stages are complete it’s time to make headway towards Wembley’s arch, get
your bag searched by someone who wishes they tried harder at school and then
find your seat.
Digression over. The game began like a chess match, much
like the previous encounter against United. As both teams probed and played the
possession game you could fee that if the deadlock was to be broken it would be
by City. We looked flat. Just after 30 mins breaking the deadlock is exactly
what Man City did, Nasri luckily benefiting from a ricochet before passing past
Cech.
After half time we needed one of the old ‘come out a
different team’ moments of inspiration – none arrived. Some more shocking defending
allowed Aguero to peel off and he looped a header in to double their lead. One
thing I love about Chelsea fans is how we burst into encouraging voice after
conceding, we knew we needed to score the next goal.
20 minutes to go and substitutions enforced, defenders for
City and a striker for Chelsea. Fair play to Fernando Torres, the Spaniard
changed the game with his introduction. Demba Ba had half a chance and took it
superbly with an acrobatic effort into the corner – game on! The momentum shifted
completely and for the last 15 minutes it was an assault on the City goal. The talking point came when Torres went
through on goal only to be grappled by Kompany. The Belgian literally had the
shirt off his back but Chris Foy waved no penalty. Quite funny to see Chris Hoy
tweet about the abuse he was getting from seemingly dyslexic fans, their
spelling probably blinded by anger. 2-1 is how it ended leaving us with just
the Europa League to play for.
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