On the day when the two teams were both suffering by their own ‘crisis’ it was the help from both referee and linesman wins it for the Blues side in an controversial way.
It reminds me of what the City manager have said about using the technology to solve this kind of hard call and to avoid any wrongly taken decision who could be the end of someone’s career, in this case our Sam Allardyce.
Recently, the importance of using the technology, such as television replay, to look for any uncertain thing such as an offside position was highly on demand. Many teams and managers lately are suffering by a very close judgment call which is led to their team defeats.
According to the UEFA Law #11, a player is in an offside position only penalised if, at the moment the ball touches or is played by one of his team, he is, in the opinion of the referee, involved in active play by interfering with play, meaning playing or touching the ball passed or touched by a team-mate.
Today, we have been robbed by the linesmen not the Chelsea team, when the linesman failed to analyze the offside situation when Kalou strike win his team in a very close call of 87 minutes. The ball from Obi Mikel was first being deflected via the heels of Michael Essien.
Well, the judgement has been done and like it or not, we have to be brave and keep our heads up and marching forward to the year of 2008, which I hope will be better than what we have in 2007.
As for today’s match, we are surely have to take our responsibility for any possibility and have to fight for it. The Lads has shown it today, the performance in which Big Sam said could win us against Derby and Wigan. After once again trailing from a goal behind in the first half from Essien’s goal, Nicky Butt cancel it with his goal in second-half.
Their first goal was something that have been United’s biggest problem for many years. Steven Taylor was hesitating and didn’t see Given was in out-position and he failed to clear the ball before Essien using another deflected ball to score in 29th minutes.
Newcastle responded very well and could have been two goals up when in the 40 minutes of time, Martins is denied a penalty by Mike Riley after being blocked by the imposing figure of Alex just inside the Blues area. While three minutes later, Cacapa brings the ball out of our defence and tries to get Martins away. It’s a decent ball and the Nigerian gets a shot away but sadly it lacks direction and whistles well wide.
United’s work finally meet the result in five minutes before the hour mark. Starting from Nicky Butt’s feed the ball to N’Zogbia on the left, the French winger forces his way past Mikel and advances into the hosts’ penalty area.
Martins tries to get on the end of his low cross and the ball spins free inside the six-yard box where Butt runs to turn in from two yards out for his second goals for United this season. Have been liften up by the goal, Newcastle keep pushing forward and give some serious threads to the blues defensive lines.
Damien’s chance to score has been denied by Belletti as he slides to nick the ball away and Milner sees his high cross plucked from Martins’ head by Hilario.
Big Sam make two changes to bring in David Rozehnal replacing Alan Smith who had taken a hefty whack to the face with team-mates Abdoulaye Faye and looks a little dazed. Oba Martins makes way for Michael Owen who is making his first appearance since the derby draw at Sunderland.
The game looks destined to end in a draw before Kalou’s controversial strike denied the point for our team. After the game, Allardyce admitted that it was a ‘huge blow’ to come away from Stamford Bridge empty-handed while we have several good chances to win this out.
“For us it’s a huge blow to our confidence after a tremendous performance which should have got us at least a point.” Allardyce said as quoted from the official site, “We could maybe have scored a second in the second half and of course we had two clear chances for Oba in the first one-on-one.”
TEAMS
Chelsea FC: Hilario, Michael Essien, Joe Cole (Claudio Pizzaro, 65″), John Obi Mikel, Michael Ballack (c), Wayne Bridge, Salomon Kalou, Tal Ben-Haim, Shaun Wright-Phillips, Alex, Juliano Belletti Subs: Steve Sidwell, Scott Sinclair, Paulo Ferreira, Rhys Taylor
Newcastle United FC: Shay Given, Claudio Cacapa, Habib Beye, Charles N’Zogbia, Steven Taylor, Abdoulaye Faye, Nicky Butt, James Milner, Damien Duff, Alan Smith (David Rozehnal, 70″), Oba Martins (Michael Owen, 73″) Subs: Steve Harper, Emre, Mark Viduka
Referee: Mike Riley Attendance: 41, 751
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