By Myles Palmer
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CHELSEA often pass the ball into areas, Arsenal mostly pass it to feet.
That was my main conclusion on Sunday.
An hour after writing that I was looking forward to a chilled-out Sunday, and watching the match on the box, I get a phone call : “I’ve got two free tickets for Chelsea,do you fancy it?”
Visually, this game is always watchable because the strips make it easy : the all-blues against the all-reds.
MOURINHO’s Portuguese scout prepares a five-page dossier on every opponent, so maybe Benitez tried to confound that preparation by making radical team changes. Which flopped.
He dropped Dudek for Kirkland, put Traore at left back,Riise to left midfield, and brought in Diao.
Riise and Diao did nothing , which left poor Xabi Alonso trying to supply Kewell, Cisse and Garcia on his own.
CHELSEA are the tightest unit I’ve seen since Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters band at the Rainbow in 1973.
Smertin tucks in to play a double anchor role with Makelele, so they attack with only four players : Lamps, Duff and the strikers
The way Chelsea keep their shape, their level of positional discipline, goes beyond the great George Graham teams, but there is less momentum, so it’s not exciting.
That said, Lamps had four chances in the first half.
Drogba went off injured after 38 and Joe Cole came on and played the best game I’ve ever seen him play.
He was very zippy and productive in an attacking midfield role, as Eidur switched to centre forward.
Cole had a shot that bounced and was headed off the line by Kewell, then he scored the winner with a sweet flick as a Lamps freekick bounced at the near post.
Chelsea will continue to be controversial for the next few months because they play 1-0 football.
Sometimes they score three goals, sometimes they score one or none.
It’s not entertaining, but it could win the title.
What I noticed, and what makes them stylistically different to Arsenal, is that they often pass the ball into areas, rather than to feet.
Their style has not had time to develop yet.
As I tried to emphasise in The Professor, a style of play takes years to evolve because players need time to blend,to create a rapport, to trust each other, to read each other,to rehearse runs and first-time passes, to create partnerships.
Arsenal’s quick-passing narrow style of play is thrilling, penetrating, and unique, but it took seven years to develop into what it is now.
Chelsea have established good habits, a way of playing that avoids risks, since they mix slower, careful multi-pass moves with longer balls aimed into areas.
Drogba is a fine athlete who is learning Premiership football.
Gudjohnsen is one of the world’s most under-rated strikers. This was one of his least effective games, but he will come again, and soon.
WE DONT LIKE clever, cocky people in England, and every day I talk to someone else who doesn’t like Jose Mourinho.
But I still like him. He is in a hurry, his boss can afford to replace him, and he gives a straight answer to a straight question.
It’s far too soon to judge Mourinho.
For the moment I would say this : No other manager in the history of English football would have bawled out Joe Cole for playing selfishly after scoring the winning goal, and done it in the tunnel in front of the TV crews.
Except Clough.
As I say, Mourinho is in a hurry.
He knows what he wants, he’s a lot smarter than any of the players, and he knows that his success or failure depends on his relationships with his players.
I like him. He is different, interesting, gives us something to talk about.
But, obviously, if Drogba, Duff and Eidur start backing into defenders, and sticking fingers in their eyes, and falling over, then I won’t like Mourinho.
It’s only October and Chelsea have played eight league games and scored eight goals, conceding one.
We’ll see in November-December-January whether they can really challenge Arsenal.
IT’S A PRETTY BORING WEEK for football junkies and I can’t watch the Tory Conference or the absurd circus of Kerry versus Bush
November’s election is a wet dream moment for the USA’s ruling class : the presidency contested by two Skull & Bones men !
That’s what I call a win-win situation.
Democracy in Iraq? Please!
Let’s see democracy in the USA first.
MY GOOD NEWS is that I’ve been talking to a girl called Shabina in India, and she’s sending me a new computer.
And I’ve finished The Motorcycle Diaries, an amazing book which all young people should read.
It’s only 165 pages.
The book describes how Ernesto Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, Argentinian medical students, set out to discover South America on a 500cc Norton in 1952.
Guevara was a thoughtful young man who adored the Chilean people.
He writes, “The biggest effort Chile should make is to shake its uncomfortable Yankee friend from its back, a task that for the moment is Herculean, given the quantity of dollars the United States has invested here and the ease with which it flexes its economic muscle whenever its interests seem threatened.”
In the Fifties there was less information in the world, but more wisdom.
September 7th 2004