Chelsea - anything could happen - 08/11/2003

On top of his game

Links:  Players:    Frank Lampard    Kieron Dyer    Craig Bellamy    Jonathan Woodgate  Clubs:    Chelsea    Newcastle United

I thought the second half of the Basel match was an excellent display of football and we deserved to come away with a win. The three away goals may also be important – if we’d won by that scoreline against Partizan Belgrade, we’d still be in the Champions League! To be honest I thought that Basel weren’t as impressive as we’d expected, but maybe we caught them on a bad day? With the Partizan game fresh in the memory, there’ll be no complacency for the return fixture at the end of the month.

Tomorrow’s game at Chelsea is very hard to call, we could go down there and return with three points – but we could also come away after a bit of a hiding! If we play to our potential we’ll cause them big problems, but after an away midweek game on Thursday, we might be both physically and mentally tired. I think it’s fair to say that they have a better squad, but you can only play eleven on the pitch at any time, and even with Kieron, Woody, and Beller’s on the injured list, the gaffer can still name a strong starting eleven and a very decent bench.

Chelsea have some big names, and I know that Gavin Peacock thinks Frank Lampard has been tremendous this season, so it’ll be great to see how they play as both individuals, and as a team.

On a personal front, I’m fit and played in the Pontins game against Notts County on Thursday afternoon – even scored a last minute winner. But Pontins football is far from that of Premiership or Nationwide quality. We’ll see what happens in the transfer window, although any move, if it should happen, will probably involve at least an initial loan period.  

What is your opinion about this article?
Start a new topic at our forum!