Main Page

 

 

Season 2002-03 
Chelsea (a) Premiership

 

   
Date:
Saturday 14th September 2002, 3pm

Venue: Stamford Bridge

Conditions: Storm clouds on the horizon, speaking metaphorically not meteorologically......
 




Chelsea 3 - 0 Newcastle United
Teams
 

Goals

14 mins Cross from the left at the old shed end. Nicos Dabizas nowhere, Eidur Gudjohnsen heads in off the post. 0-1

26 mins
A clumsy Gary Speed challenge on Gianfranco Zola right in the prime central spot on the "D" for a free kick which saw the Welsh captain booked. To compound his misery Zola's free-kick went into the far corner off his head with Shay Given wrong-footed. 0-2

Half time:  Chelsea 2 Newcastle 0

58 mins Another almighty blunder at the back; Shay doing Aaron Hughes no favours by playing him into trouble. Hughes was too easily dispossessed by Zenden leaving Zola to cross to Gudjohnsen for a tap into the empty net.

From the away section vantage point the vital action had been slightly earlier when Given had drawn jeers from the crowd for a fumbling clearance. Next time Hughes glanced infield to Given while in the act of turning and obviously decided not to pressurise him by laying it off. A moment later the ball was in the back of the net.0-3

Full time:  Chelsea 3 Newcastle 0

We Said

Sir Bobby said:

"We have still got players who aren't anywhere near where they were last year. We need some players to recover and reach that form. Craig Bellamy will get better and the others will. We will get better, there's no doubting that.

"Bellamy did OK, I took him off because we are trying to save him for Wednesday's trip to the Ukraine. I know he can get better, this was his first game and he lasted longer than I thought.

"Laurent Robert will get better, he's been out for two months. Andy O'Brien's been out for two weeks. But we need a show from everyone else.

"We are already eight points behind Chelsea and we're playing catch-up with the clubs at the top of the table. The third goal absolutely killed us. It was a comic goal and I cannot say worse than that. That was always going to be an important goal, we knew that.

"To be fair we played quite well second-half. We weren't encamped in their half, but we were having plenty of possession.

"But the third goal puts a blot on the whole thing and 3-0 looks like a battering which we have had.

"We play so miserably in London and we have done it again."

They Said

Ranieri said:

"Some of my players were, er... fantastic,"

"It's more important to see the horses at the end of the race than the beginning,"

Match Stats

All time Premiership: P355 W158 D89 L108 F558 A427 Points= 563

Robson NUFC (all competitions): P149, W71, D35, L43

Number of unsuccessful attempts since we last won at Stamford Bridge: 13 
(November 1986 Chelsea 1 Newcastle 3)

Number of unsuccessful attempts since we last beat Chelsea anywhere: 11
(May 1997 Newcastle 3 Chelsea 1)

Gary Speed made his 150th Premiership start for United and his 200th Newcastle appearance, marking it with a booking, a deflection into his own net and some more occasional abuse from his own fans.

He also ended up playing left back in the closing stages, emulating his recent repositioning when playing for Wales in Finland.

Waffle

The alarm bells haven't started ringing loudly yet, but it wasn't just the post-match bucket of 5% lager that caused a distant clanging in my head on Sunday morning......

To lose at Stamford Bridge is now so much of an everyday happening to us that it's almost not worth commenting upon. To lose so ineptly however, and look so incapable of lifting ourselves in the process is something demanding of both criticism and examination.

But let's start with the off-field action, of which there was a fair amount.

Newcastle fans arrived at the ground in what seemed to be a fairly poor mood generally, having forked out £40 a time for admission.

However, given the fact there were enough people prepared to pay that to snap up all the tickets, maybe the other grounds have got it  wrong, and Ken Bates provides the voice of commercial reason.....or maybe he is just a greedy tw*t as the song went....

The one thing the inflated ticket price didn't stop was a high knacker contingent in the away end though, and after a series of debatable decisions in the first half, the adjacent press box found itself under something of a siege. 

Members of the Tyneside intelligentsia gave their own personal punters panel views about the ref to those journalists who hadn't retreated to the press room, while others desperately tried to prove their non-cockney Toon credentials by brandishing their Newcastle United cufflinks at the ugly mob....

On to the second half then and with the team two down, the support was beginning to wane. Enter the United subs, who warmed up for an inordinate period on the narrow strip of track between the pitch and the away section. 

They were then joined by a certain Mr JF Hasselbaink, who upon being asked by the Chelsea fans to our right what the score was, gave a two handed approximation by use of his fingers. That he did this to the Newcastle fans wasn't a very clever trick, but what had been mild cat-calling graduated to your average-bog-standard-old-style-abuse-the-darkie scenario.

One or two folk attempted to join Hasselbaink on the sidelines to have a personal audience, but a fair number of those who took offence merely contented themselves with around a minute of "ooh ooh" monkey impressions. 

What Jenas and Ameobi thought of this wasn't recorded.

This didn't seem especially to affect JFH, who duly returned after the third goal with an amended finger gesture, despite by this point having been asked by one sane steward to pack it in.

By then those Toon fans involved appeared to have calmed down - certainly some had gone home. Of the rest though, more than one or two were engaged in animated discussions with Newcastle fans who had the temerity to object to their lunatic behaviour.

As a consequence of this, a number of fans were ejected by stewards and police while others were engaged in trying to start fights and issue threats of reprisal.

Not surprisingly the final 20 minutes of the game were a total non-event off the field and support dwindled away as people just threw in the towel. Bit like the team really....

The question has to be asked - what the hell got into some of our lot on Saturday?

Without trying excuse the actions of the idiots (after all there was a brief bout of racist crap at Man City this season so wasn't a one-off) maybe the surroundings we were in at Stamford Bridge have something to do with it.

We're not talking feng shui here, but the away section is a cramped, old-fashioned pen that is reminiscent of the worst of the 1980's, and this seems to bring out similarly old-fashioned behaviour from it's occupants. 

Already this season Arsenal fans have indulged in boorish antics, with an empty beer bottle being flung at a player from this section - and what the hell the Gooners have got to be upset about? 

As for the team, it's difficult to be objective when faced with a poor performance on this ground, so often have we endured it.

From the off though the team seemed to be in as negative a frame of mind as the fans, and the Bellamy/ Desailly incident seemed at first sight to be a case of the taffy over-reacting once, then creating a second falling over opportunity out of nothing. Would that he could have fashioned something in the goal-scoring stakes....

And as for Shearer - once Desailly had sinned it was obvious that retribution would follow from a boot or other extremity of our captain at some stage, but catching him a few moments later right in front of the referee was just daft. And he didn't even do it properly, Desailly walking away sans limp.

Thereafter Shearer looked sullen, joining Bernard (bewildered), Robert (disinterested) and most of the others in having ineffective afternoons. 

In a nutshell we were vulnerable to pace and in particular the assured first touch, accurate passing and good movement of the home side. 

Our ponderous attacks failed to hit Chelsea on the break - the one time Dyer burst forward he lost his way to goal and the chance disappeared. Had LuaLua been considered he may have shaken things up a bit, but you'll have to ask Bobby about that one.....

Too many players meandered around in midfield, with Speed manfully trying to keep things together on his own in that area - Acuna or Jenas would perhaps have helped him bail out the sinking ship for longer.

Midfield shortcomings allowed the home side to gallop forward and stretch our backline, and a better side than Chelsea could have got a hatful - that's the frustrating thing, Ranieri's team are good but not great.

At the back our well-documented and currently fashionable defensive shortcomings were evident to a certain extent, but no amount of organising or coaching could have avoided the human error of goals two and three. 

Quite simply we didn't have the quality to score a goal - therefore once Chelsea went ahead we were a beaten side. Unfair in those circumstances to blame Titus, Nicos or whoever in isolation. Or the referee.

We could probably have done without a trip to Kiev this week in the run up to the mackem visit, but regardless of what country our preparation is done in, three points are essential against Peytar & Co.

Putting alongside local concerns, to miss out on another three points would be to allow other teams to pull still further away from us at this early stage in proceedings. There will be a revival at some stage and the newspapers will have to switch their attentions to thought-provoking articles about some other poor saps, but we cannot afford to slouch around until the clocks go back.

If this day can be summed up it's that both team and fans allowed themselves to be sidetracked too easily. Quite literally we took our eye off the ball and were made to pay. Mistakes were made, lessons have to be learned and without further delay. 

PS: There is one easy way to cut off the problems that caused stewarding headaches and all the other associated nastiness of this game - move the away fans section elsewhere, in the manner of SJP.

If Chelsea stuck the travellers up in the gods - say one corner of the old Shed end, there'd be no risk of pitchside incursions, no subs to annoy, no press to harangue.....and facilities that are an improvement on the farmyard stockade our £40 currently buys us. 

The chances of this happening of course are about as remote as us winning a match at this damn place. 

Biffa

Reports
 
Back to Main Page
 


Page last updated 14 September, 2020