The Luck is with Chelsea

It’s hard to believe but despite having all those great players plus a manager who has declared himself ‘great’ and implied that, to quote Cassius Clay, he’s the ‘greatest of all time’, Chelsea made extremely heavy weather of squeezing into the quarter finals of the Champions League by an aggregate score of 3-2 over modest opposition.

At half time the omens did not look good because they were trailing to a 15th minute goal from Ricardo Quaresma, but fortunately Porto goalkeeper Helton obligingly allowed a weak shot from Robben to slip through his grasp just three minutes after the interval. Then a minor miracle happened. With little more than ten minutes remaining Michael Ballack, who has clearly been saving himself all season for some sort of contribution, converted a pass from Shevchenko to give Chelsea the winner.

‘Fortunate’ would be putting it mildly. But you’ll never get Mourinho, who has been extremely busy accusing his Premiership rivals of being lucky, to admit it.