Chelsea 1 – 0 Stoke

Sunday 26^th January from Stamford Bridge:

Chelsea 1 – 0 Stoke

Farewell to Juan Mata

I have to start this post with a farewell to Juan Mata. You could tell the little Spaniard loved the club. His passion on the pitch, his social media interactions and his personal blog were all blue. Not to mention the extremely sincere letter he posted to the fans upon his departure from the bridge. I myself, like most Chelsea fans, will have no animosity toward him when he comes back to Stamford Bridge– even in a Man Utd shirt. I imagine he’ll be respectively greeted when he returns, much the same as Joe Cole was when he returned with West Ham, although probably not as much as Drogba will be in March. It was hideous watching Juan resigned to the bench, the only thing worse than seeing him sign for a rival was seeing him sitting there without getting a minute of action. In his two years at the club he had won the Champions League, Europa League and FA Cup as well as being crowned player of the season both years. What an achievement. We wont be calling Juan a traitor or burning our number 10 shirts. Good luck for the future Juan Mata (until you face Chelsea of course).

We had made the FA Cup our own, but in recent years it has been Man city that have dominated cup proceedings. They’re through and we HAD to follow them, but first the Stoke rugby team stood in our way. It was a fairly uneventful first half until we were awarded a dangerous free kick. Luiz stepped up and the whole stadium was expecting another Drogba-esque strike. Yet Luiz ran over it and left it to another Brazilian, Oscar, who found the top corner with a delightful curler.

Oscar and Hazard were sublime the entire match and I stick my neck out once again when I say that at least one of them will win one day the Ballon d’Or. After the deadlock was broken it was sadly the same old story that has haunted us for the last few months; we couldn’t score and kill the game. There was a cheering opportunity though, as old Chelsea legend Gianfranco Zola stood up right behind us in the commentary box. I remember thinking Juan Mata could be the next Zola.

I don’t think the Chelsea fan sat directly behind me has a future career in commentating with Zola. In the first half he called Eto’o Willian. In the second half he called Eto’o Ba until Ba came on for Eto’o. He called Schurrle Torres before making a comment about his longer hair. Finally, he called Matic Meireles, a player who doesn’t even play in the league anymore. What an effort, in fact, his effort was nearly as bad as Stoke’s final rally. Never have I seen a team not want to score. They didn’t want the replay and watching them play along the back four whilst 1-0 down with 2 minutes to go was unreal. The match ended 1-0 and attention turned to the next round’s draw. Bring on Man City away.