John Terry and Wayne Bridge have taken the headlines a lot recently (with the former losing his England captaincy for sleeping with the latter’s ex girlfriend) ands today they were set to face off against each other with Chelsea at home to Manchester City.
Terry and Bridge shook the hand of each opposing player but were sure to avoid shaking each others hand as this game began.
In my Weekend Premiership Predictions, I did say that highly favored Chelsea would struggle today against Manchester City and wouldn’t win, but I certainly wasn’t expecting any of this to happen…
We had thirty minutes of what was very much a defense stalemate before things began to pick up slightly, with Chelsea having the edge. Drogba and Anelka both fired off shots as the home team looked for the edge. Then, with five minutes till half time, Cole slid a sweet through-ball to Lampard who drove his shot first time and found the bottom corner, putting The Blues into a 1-0 lead.
Not long after they opened the scoring Chelsea failed to deal with a long clearance, with Mikel heading the ball backwards and straight into the run of Carlos Tevez. The bullish Argentine twisted and turned his way through two defenders before squeezing off a shot which trickled past the Goalkeeper and over the line. The star striker squared the game up just before half time.
The second half began as the first had ended and five minutes in, Bellamy raced down the left wing – where he had stayed all game – beat Mikel with pace and smashed a tight left footed shot across goal, beating Hilario and putting City into a 2-1 lead.
Things got worse for Chelsea when Belletti pulled down Barry in the box and the referee pointed to the spot and gave Belletti a straight red card. Tevez stepped up, converted the penalty and gave Manchester City an impressive 3-1 lead. Shortly after the goal Ballack was shown a second yellow and followed Belletti down the tunnel, as Chelsea were reduced to 9 men.
Wright-Phillips broke away down the right and slid a pass to Bellamy who tapped into the open-goal to make it 4-1 before Lampard drove in a penalty on ninety minutes to give Chelsea a minor consolation. A highly entertaining game – if you cancel out the first half hour.
