Written by Anthony Williams
Premier League champions Chelsea ran out 4-2 winners in a thrilling game against Sunderland at the Stadium of Light last night, but what are the five things we learned from the game?
Man of the match – Nicolas Anelka: the Frenchman has come under a lot of criticism this season (and rightly so) but in yesterday’s game he looked back to his best and has given Carlo Ancelotti a happy headache as he tries to work out how best to fit new signing Fernando Torres into the Chelsea XI.
Anelka seemed to enjoy playing in a deeper position and looked a lot more comfortable than he had done for a long time, could he play a ‘tip of the diamond’ role?
Unpredictable Chelsea: with Torres and David Luiz joining the ranks, it has made us a lot more unpredictable than we have been in recent months.
I’m sure Kenny Dalglish will be scratching his head as much as the rest of us as he tries to guess how the Blues will approach the game against his Liverpool side on Sunday. Will Torres and/or Luiz start? What formation will we play? Etc…
The bench: after months of complaining about the lack of strength in depth after Michael Ballack, Ricardo Carvalho, Deco, Juliano Belletti and Joe Cole left in the summer, we have finally regained some of that with the new arrivals and the likes of Yury Zhirkov, Alex and Yossi Benayoun to return to action (after they recover from their respective injury problems).
Corners: why is Didier Drogba taking them? Surely we would be better off with him attacking them, although admittedly both Frank Lampard and Florent Malouda have taken some stinkers of late.
Fear: all the reasons above (except the corners one, of course) demonstrate why Chelsea are a team to be feared once again. It’s a long road ahead, with plenty of tests and trials, but can anyone seriously rule the Blues out of winning serious silverware this season? I don’t think they can.
This article was first published on TheShedEnder.com – follow him on Twitter HERE
Use your first FREE bet and play Picklive NOW!