All the sting from this fixture was drawn half an hour from the start in a flurry of goals at Upton Park. As they changed in the Britannia's dressing rooms, Chelsea would have known Manchester United were two down and the scenario paintedby Carlo Ancelotti that by winning their final nine games the championship could be retained was beginning to take flight.
By the time Chelsea began the warm-up, the electronic screen behind them was showing images, 10 feet high, of Wayne Rooney dragging the title ever closer to Old Trafford. And when the final whistle went and the screen relayed pictures of Stoke's manager, Tony Pulis, embracing his backroom staff it confirmed what most, deep down, at Stamford Bridge, already knew.
The first of those nine games had not been won and by striking the frame of Petr Cech's goal twice in the second half, Stoke demonstratedhow easily it could have been lost. Chelsea's season will come down to two enormous throws of the dice against United in the Champions League. Ancelotti did not concede the title but he has spent the last couple of months trying not to confirm that this was a race Chelsea were still in. "The gap is more open," he said with some familiar shrugs of his dark-suited shoulders.
Stoke away is one of the Premier League's defining tests. Arsenal and Liverpool have stumbled here, Manchester United have never dropped a point in the fierce, frenetic atmosphere of the Britannia and, until yesterday, nor had Chelsea.
In Pulis's words, they were a team who were prepared to exhaust themselves against the rock wall of Stoke's defence rather than save something for Wednesday night at Stamford Bridge. However, particularly on the wings, Stoke have begun to add some fluency and a little beauty to the granite. Watching Stoke is rather like living in a council house with a Canaletto on the wall and their opening goal was a thing of passion, perseverance and beauty.
Having picked up the ball on the left flank, not far from the halfway line, Jonathan Walters beat David Luiz and kept on running. The options began to stretch out before him, with Kenwyne Jones screaming for a pass, but Walters kept going, turned Michael Essien and then shot between him and the sprawling figure of John Terry to beat Cech at his near post.
The reaction was instant. Pulis reflected that "Chelsea pushed us into pockets and kept picking our pockets." However, it was not until Drogba became the first Chelsea striker to score since Fernando Torres' arrival in London, that they emerged with hard cash.
It was safe to assume that Drogba, who had been preferred to Torres as Nicolas Anelka's strike partner, had other things on his mind. The civil war in Ivory Coast is nearing its bloody, predictable climax and he had made a brief return to his homeland in the days before this fixture.
And yet Drogba played with freedom and sometimes brilliance. When Anelka took the ball and gave a brief glance up, he anticipated well before Danny Higginbotham where the chip would go. The result was a fierce, diving header that gave Asmir Begovic not the slightest chance. In the second half he turned and drove against the crossbar. Torres was eventually introduced – "to give us more presence in the box" in Ancelotti's words – but his play again looked drained of self-belief.
As they shook off Chelsea's shackles after the interval, Stoke seemed awash with it. Jermaine Pennant shot into Cech's boots, Marc Wilson sent a free-kick clattering against the crossbar and from the subsequent corner, Robert Huth struck it again.
Stoke are preparing for an FA Cup semi-final, their biggest game since the 1972 League Cup final when they overcame Chelsea at Wembley, and for both clubs this match was supposed to be an hors d'oeuvre. It was one Marco Pierre White would have been proud of.
Attendance: 27,508
Referee: Peter Walton
Man of the match: Drogba
Match rating: 7/10
Source : The Independent 3 April 2011
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