Just my own comments on the match.
Chelsea was as the commentator said, lifeless. The same drive that
Chelsea has displayed for the past 3 seasons was absent. Even John
Terry looked sian.... which is really bad news.
The referee was horrible, making quite a few bad calls and did
really weird things. Like the incident where Man U played the ball
out, Chelsea themselves expected to be giving the ball back from a
throw in. No one knew what the ref wanted when he brought the ball
back onto the pitch. Free kick? Drop ball? Didn't seem like either.
I still don't know what it was.
Mikel's tackle was a very bad one, hard and with studs showing. But
personally I don't think it was worth a straight red card. Yellow
definitely but red was a little harsh.
Rooney could have been sent off. To me he deserved a yellow card
when he knocked over Ashley Cole in the second half. But the replay
seems to show that it was more of a push than a direct elbow or
something like that. The initial footage seemed as if Rooney
charged in with an elbow. Still, I wouldn't have been suprised to
see Rooney get a second yellow.5
Referee's judgement calls were inconsistent as well. I can't say
for sure the incident involving Joe Cole and Evra was a definite
penalty, Joe Cole did get the ball but it was from behind and hard
to tell if he got the man first or player first. He definitely
brought Evra off his footing. I felt though that John Terry's
tackle on Rooney in the second half was a similar tackle, the one
where Terry got a yellow card. Based on what I saw from the
television, if the first one wasn't a foul, then neither should the
second one. At least, that's what I think.
I'm not too surprised Ben Haim gave away a penalty, but I didn't
really expect it to be in that manner. There was definite contact
by Ben Haim, and Saha did seem to make a meal out of it, but there
was a foul because Ben Haim kicked Saha on the shin. Not hard but
he did, mistimed maybe? Cech almost saved the penalty though. In
fact, I think Cech did very well during the match.
Tevez scored as a result of Chelsea not being able to clear
properly. Wasn't the first time in the match either so they had it
coming. The compusure wasn't there.
And the protest against the penalty was reasonably mild, if
Mourinho was still manager it'd be a different case altogether.
Although the penalty call was valid, I've seen teams protest for
more clear cut penalties than that.
Overall it wasn't a great match, no real flair from either side.
The match also lacked the atmosphere and intensity you would expect
from a match between title contenders.
I would have liked to see a draw, but with Chelsea played the way
they did, they might still have lost even with 11 men. Even if
Mikel wasn't sent off, I think he'd be conceding a lot of fouls and
maybe another penalty. His sending off did prevent Chelsea from
venturing forward more.
Shevchenko was pretty hard working and you could see he played with
less burden than he has for the past year. But he's still a little
lacking in sharpness and his anticipation is not quite there. Might
be due to different team tactics as well.
