Chelsea 1 Southend 1:THE MOST shocking thing about this result, perhaps, is that it was not a shock. Despite the gigantic disparity in wealth and status between the Premier League aristocrats and the League One interlopers, Chelsea's curious impotence at home, where this season they have laboured in the league and lost to Burnley in the League Cup, meant many saw this result coming. Certainly Southend's players, like their 6,000 fans who brought increasingly rare levity and volume to the stadium formerly known as a fortress, travelled with an optimism that attested to their hosts' recent tribulations.

"No disrespect to them but they've been stuttering at home recently so we thought that if we come here and keep them quiet, or at least don't let them score early on, their fans would get a bit restless and it would work in our favour," explained the Southend goalkeeper Steve Mildenhall.

Empathy from Southend was not what Luiz Felipe Scolari needed from this match. Following a week in which he had earnestly pooh-poohed reports of dressingroom discontent, the Brazilian yearned for an emphatic victory. His starting line-up reflected that requirement as the manager recanted his pledge to blood youngsters such as Michael Mancienne and instead fielded a side that, with the exception of the deliberate omissions of Petr Cech and Nicolas Anelka, was as close to full-strength as injuries and suspensions permitted.

It looked at first that Scolari's wish would be granted as his team tore into visitors who, for all their diligence and discipline, seemed dangerously out of their depth.

After the first 20 minutes, in which Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba, Joe Cole and Ashley Cole were all presented with explicit invitations to score, it seemed highly unlikely that the Southend centre-back Peter Clarke would later be allowed to celebrate his 27th birthday by helping himself to a last-minute equaliser.

In an only recently bygone era that scenario would have been impossible as soon as Salomon Kalou profited from shoddy defending to head a Lampard corner into the net on 31 minutes.

The Southend manager, Steve Tilson, however, was obviously aware of even more recent history and resolved that a one-goal deficit was still retrievable and ordered one of his two strikers, Alex Revell, backwards to condense midfield. It is a ploy that has worked for Chelsea's opponents too frequently for Scolari's liking yet countering it still appears beyond the Brazilian.

Rather than serve as a knockout punch, the goal and Southend's subsequent reshuffle sent Chelsea into a daze for the remainder of the first half. And, to the audible consternation of the home crowd, most of the second period too.

Joe Cole twice trotted to the sidelines for instructions from Scolari and as time ticked down Drogba sought to find space on the left wing only for the manager to order him back to the centre. Yet Chelsea remained bereft of creativity and penetration.

Scolari insisted afterwards the answer lies in more training rather than in the transfer market. "I have strikers and I don't expect to work with any players other than the ones I have now," he said. "When I arrived I asked the club for only one player - Deco."

Deco was missing and so too was John Terry, in whose absence Southend exposed another Chelsea frailty. In the 85th minute Johnny Herd hoisted a high ball into the box and Clarke outjumped the defenders and goalkeeper Carlo Cudicini to loop a header on to the bar. Then, in the 90th minute, Herd flung in a long throw-in that Ricardo Carvahlo could only head backwards to Clarke, who nodded into the net from five yards.

Again Scolari insisted there was no problem. "So we missed one header, but we won the other 99," he said. Others did not agree with that calculation.

There was still time after Clarke's goal to ensure the focus remained on Chelsea's shortcomings at the other end. In a frantic final few seconds, Lampard lashed in a cross to the substitute Franco Di Santo, who met it firmly with his head five yards from goal. Mildenhall plunged to his right and acrobatically turned the ball away.