This is the first time that Swansea won at Chelsea for 87 years, and they certainly did not deserve it. Chelsea set out a strong line-up, with Fernando Torres up front over Demba Ba. To begin with I did not know what was going through Rafa's mind, dropping Ba who scored two against Southampton on his debut. But after thinking about it, saving Demba Ba's energy levels for the away game to Stoke this weekend could be used as an excuse from the Spaniard.
Chelsea started the game brightly, and dominated for the first half an hour. We played beautiful fast flowing attacking football that I'm sure impressed owner Roman Abramovich. We dominated possesion, and always looked like we were about to score the opener. At this point I genuinely believed we would go on to win 3, maybe 4-nil. All of our attempts failed to hit the net, with some poor execution from the likes of Juan Mata and David Luiz. A lovely bit of play came in the 11th minute of the game, when Oscar and Eden Hazard combined together to break apart the Swansea defence to provide Ramires with an exciting chance on goal, but the Brazilian's final shot lacked power and placement and was comfortably saved by Swansea keeper, Tremmel. Another great chance came in the 26th minute, as Eden Hazard attacked the Swansea defence before squaring a pass to the open Juan Mata, who's shot lacked a lot of power and placement, which is unusual for Juan.
The 39th minute was when the pain began. Ross Turnbull passed the ball out to centre-back Branislav Ivanovic. A poor first touch saw the ball pounced on by De Guzman, who managed to shrug off the Serbian and get the ball to the last person Branislav would want the ball to fall to. Michu. The Spaniard hit the ball from outside of the box into the near post, gliding past Ross Turnbull to the Chelsea fan's shock, taking his season's total to 16 goals.
The second half started in the same manner, with Chelsea dominating possesion but failing to convert any chances. Swansea keeper Tremmel kept Swansea in the game again, as a well struck David Luiz free kick broke through the Swansea wall, resulting in a brilliant save by the German keeper. Swansea tried their hardest to stop Chelsea from scoring an equaliser, but it always looked like we would. Much to the home fan's approval, Frank Lampard replaced Ramires 20 minutes before the end, resulting in a huge cheer from the Chelsea faithful. Chelsea were still lacking the final finish, with Chelsea fans singing "We want Demba Ba". Ba finally replaced Fernando Torres 10 minutes before the end. Ba quickly made his presence known, looking like he would score with two attempts immediately. Ba (and nearly every Chelsea fan) thought he deserved a penalty as the Swansea keeper brought him down in the box, only to be wrongly booked for diving. Ridiculous decision ref, I hope that yellow card gets over-turned. I know football involves human error from officials, but it's costing us the game, and possibly even the Capital One Cup.
All hopes of Chelsea equalising with the Welsh team were banished as Ivanovic's poor back pass to Ross Turnbull allowed substitute Danny Graham to intercept, take it round the keeper and extend their lead to two. I jumped out of my seat again a minute after, thinking we had snatched a goal back as Ba scored, only to be called offside. The decision is an arguable one, but to be fair he was offside. Just.
This game angered me. A lot. I think if Demba Ba had started the game, or even came on 10 minutes earlier than what he did, we would have ended up winning this game, or at least going to Wales for the second leg with a draw. We were a lot better as soon as Ba came onto the pitch. We had a target in the box for crosses, who also made runs into the box regularly. There should be no question who our first choice striker should be. This looks the end for Torres. We stood by Torres all this time, but booing him as he came off shows that we have just given up. He's never going to return to the player he was. Ending the game with 64% possesion (71.8% in the second half) and 20 shots should have seen us win this game comfortably. I can forgive Ivanovic, as he usually puts in 110% every week, and rarely makes a mistake, but this is definitely something to work on, especially now he is playing in the center of defence. We played well, and definitely deserved to win the game, but football can be a funny (and stressful!) game.
These are my player ratings. I can go into detail on every one of them, but instead I have opted to rate them out of 10, with 1 being the worst and 10 the best.
Turnbull 4, Azpilicueta 6, Ivanovic 3, Cahill 6, Cole 5, Luiz 6, Ramires 7, Mata 6, Hazard 7, Oscar 7, Torres 2. Subs - Lampard 5, Ba 7, Marin 5.
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