Chelsea 1 Wigan 0: THIS WAS a fixture to deflect Chelsea's focus, an unwelcome distraction squeezed between weighty Champions League collisions with Manchester United.
Even in victory, Carlo Ancelotti bemoaned the fact his players’ minds were “already at Old Trafford” though it took Yossi Benayoun, this team’s forgotten man turned potential key performer, to put the quarter-final second leg tomorrow into context.
The Israeli had just returned to club action after almost seven months on the sidelines with a ruptured achilles to be plunged into a forlorn title defence and charged with revitalising Fernando Torres, with any hope of claiming silverware resting on overturning a deficit in the north-west. “Everyone knows we are playing to save our season,” Benayoun said. “It is our final on Tuesday.”
This contest was awkward, a hiding to nothing for the hosts against the division’s bottom club and a chance for Wigan Athletic to display their new-found resilience.
The home team drifted through systems of play in search of rhythm, from 4-3-3 back to 4-4-2, as if groping in the dark for a solution to take to United, though Ancelotti acknowledged, if the first-half performance had been bad, the second-half display was actually worse.
Ancelotti’s latest concern is too many of his players appear to be taking it on themselves individually to wrest the side back into form. Didier Drogba drove the manager to distraction with his eagerness to batter shots from distance or barge his way past all-comers. “Everyone is trying to resolve this problem we have individually,” Ancelotti said. “It’s better to stay in focus and work more with each other.”
Then, there is Torres. His drought stands at 648 minutes – 28 shots, 12 on target and no goals – as a Chelsea player. Daniel Sturridge, the youngster loaned to Bolton on the day Chelsea made their €57 million outlay to Liverpool, now boasts six goals in 621 minutes. When Benayoun slipped Torres in on goal, there was the goalkeeper Ali al-Habsi to conjure one of many fine saves.
“It seemed like he had an extra hand to save it,” Benayoun said. “Fernando was smiling and joking: ‘What more I can do?’ We were room-mates for three years at Liverpool and I know where he likes the ball and how he plays. Any chance I have to give him the ball, I will do to help give his confidence.”
Torres has at least made his first impact as a Chelsea player, albeit with a flailing arm to impede al-Habsi in the mess of bodies crammed inside the six-yard box for Florent Malouda to thrash in this game’s only goal. “He fouls the goalkeeper and gets three points for the team,” Roberto Martinez said. “That’s the experience you buy with that sort of player.”
Wigan will have gathered enough confidence from their endeavour here to sustain them into their run-in. Franco di Santo, a former Chelsea striker, drew a fine save late on from Petr Cech.
Guardian Service
