Pigs May Fly for Chelsea

Less than 48 hours after a difficult European game in Seville, Spurs were obliged to face the reigning Premiership Champions at Stamford Bridge, so it’s hardly surprising that Jose Mourinho thinks Chelsea never get the breaks. But to make matters a little easier for them, that nice Martin Jol decided that he could do without players of the calibre of Berbatov, Lennon, Keane and Zokora and referee Rob Styles handed them some special Easter free kicks.

It wasn’t an entertaining spectacle. They don’t really do entertaining spectacles at Chelsea. Unsurprisingly, Spurs were far too knackered as a result of their Spanish exertions to make a contest of it and kept giving the ball away. When they did manage to create a decent chance, it fell to the portly Mido, who headed straight at Cech, something his star striker wouldn’t have done, but as luck would have it the obliging Jol left it until the 68th minute before introducing Berbatov. And as for Chelsea, they continued to grind out their trademark product, which is football’s equivalent of painting by numbers.

In the end the game was decided by a speculative 30 yard shot from the excellent Ricardo Carvalho, duly embellished by the incompetence of the goalkeeper hailed, bizarrely, as England’s finest, yet capable of evoking fading memories of Liverpool’s Tommy Lawrence, who was known uncharitably as the flying pig.