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Entirely predictable. I said in the Roma report I wasn’t expecting anything from this game and even though I did a complete 180 before kick off and foolishly decided we’d win easily, I just put that down to being out in the sun too long. This was always going to be desperately tough for our lads and Chelsea played them like a fiddle. They sat deep, rarely ventured out in any numbers and challenged us to break them down. They let us have the ball but never let us counter attack. It’s a big compliment in a way as Chelsea are the reigning Champions but that’s twice now they’ve set up with only two attacking players and everyone else charged with stopping us. They were at home, they needed to win and they were still reluctant to attack us. Unfortunately they didn’t need to, as the one serious effort on target was all they needed. It wasn’t a bad performance from us but it never looked like we were going to have enough to break them down. We started quite brightly and the lively Mané had a couple of stinging shots from the edge of the box, but other than that Chelsea were comfortable. So were we until we gave a goal away from nothing. It was a bit unlucky as the cross by Moses took a nick of Mané which altered the flight of the ball and caused it to loop up between Van Dijk and Lovren, allowing Giroud to glance it over Karius into the far corner. Both centre backs maybe could have done better, although Lovren had more than just Giroud to worry about so any blame for him is fairly minimal I’d say. Van Dijk was in no man’s land, but I do think the deflection on the cross was the biggest reason for us conceding. Chelsea did have one or two more threatening moments with balls smashed across the face of goal, but generally we were never really under any real pressure at the back. In terms of the overall performance I think the only thing missing from when we’re at our best was that we got virtually nothing from Salah and Firmino. The rest of the side were fine, but the way we’re set up means that most of the players are facilitators for the front three. That’s why they score all the goals, but if you have two of them not firing then it’s always going to be problematic. This is just a teaser, click here to view the full report Please note that Match Reports are only available to website subscribers. Subscriptions cost just £2 a month (you need to register first) and can be purchased here. If you are not currently registered on the site, sign up for free and receive a FREE no obligation trial subscription, which gives you access to all the members only content for ONE MONTH.

Right fixtures are out, now so it should be a peice of piss, to name the 2nd Saturday 3pm kick off of the season? anyone like to try ?