C & P
This time we saw a new and disturbing element: virulent self-doubt, which is no respecter of past achievements or celebrity. Not only were these Chelsea players questioning their ability to remain a top-four club, but their supporters were querying it too. At half-time Terry and co left the field to a low rumble of boos after Bolton had been the more decisive and precise.
Signs of stress were everywhere. During an injury break Nicolas Anelka jogged over for an impassioned tactical debate with Ancelotti and his coaching staff. Throughout you could see Frank Lampard straining to be the match-changing presence he was before injury intervened in August. Only when Drogba struck a post from a Lampard diagonal pass on 49 minutes did the home crowd jolt to life.
Twelve minutes later they found the light when Drogba who was offside broke on the right and slid the ball across for Malouda to score. Overcome by relief Drogba threw himself into the first row of spectators. The kind of celebration normally reserved for goals against Barcelona was wheeled out for one against Bolton Wanderers. But it was not the full deliverance. Soon Petr Cech was tipping a Stuart Holden header over his bar and Drogba was clearing off his own line.
Chelsea were a team relearning their game. They passed like men stretching every mental faculty to remember how they did it when life was sweet. Where their passing was once instinctive, now it was weighed down by too much thought. Often, the errant passer would jerk his arms in frustration. These small gestures of exasperation spoke of a wider loss of rhythm.
History says great teams tend not to die in a two-month spiral. Decline is more gradual. Of all their recent fixtures, though, this was Chelsea's T-junction game. Their credibility as defending champions was in jeopardy. They were on the Liverpool highway to the Europa League. Spurs and Manchester City would be the eager beneficiaries of imperial decline. The autopsies would say Chelsea had stopped investing and placed all their hopes in a small core of ageing players supported by homegrown prospects who were still too busy being boys to perform the work of men.
These elegies are postponed – perhaps cancelled. Bad teams look over the edge and fall. Good ones peek and then pull back. Instinct and desperation tend to save them.
..."Wewe ni mtu mdogo sana....na mwenye amekuandika pia ni mtu mdogo sana!".