FA Premiership/Chelsea 2 Portsmouth 0: Chelsea maintained their stranglehold on the Premiership but they needed the intervention of Eidur Gudjohnsen to pull away from Portsmouth on Saturday.
Until Gudjohnsen came off the bench for the last half-hour Jose Mourinho's side, clearly hung over after their Champions League defeat by Barcelona three days earlier, lacked the subtlety required to break down some dogged defending backed by Dean Kiely's alertness in the Portsmouth goal.
Gudjohnsen made all the difference. Within five minutes he had dummied over a vague square pass from Didier Drogba, throwing the defence on to the wrong foot and setting up Frank Lampard for a well-struck low shot into the corner of the net. Then with 12 minutes remaining the Icelandic international's deft lob past the centre backs found Arjen Robben haring through to complete Chelsea's expected if laborious victory.
Until the entry of Gudjohnsen and Claude Makelele Chelsea attacked on legs of lead. Until he scored Lampard's shooting was off target and while Robben also took his goal well the Dutchman spent too much time appealing for penalties which tend not to be given when players go down too easily and too often.
Although Chelsea began the match with two wingers, Robben and Shaun Wright-Phillips, along with Joe Cole, who has a penchant for going wide, the way Pedro Mendes and Richard Hughes managed to restrict Lampard's usual supply of passes to the flanks meant that Chelsea's movements became cramped and were easily crowded out as Portsmouth regularly withdrew eight men behind the ball.
So after half-an-hour another winger, Damien Duff, replaced Asier del Horno at left back in order to give Chelsea better opportunities of an overlap.
Del Horno had been sent off against Barcelona for clobbering the Argentinian starlet Lionel Messi in Super Bowl-fashion.
Mourinho had gone off the deep end about this and after Saturday's game was presumably on a course of verbal Diocalm since his assistant, Steve Clarke, was left to do the talking. "The Del Horno substitution was tactical," Clarke said, "and a ploy we have used before."
Barcelona will be hoping it is used again to judge from the ease with which Duff's shortcomings as a full back were exposed once Portsmouth, on falling behind, had introduced Wayne Routledge to give their attack speed and width on the right.
They would have drawn level had Hughes's head made proper contact with the precise centre Routledge provided after he had turned easily past Duff.
Meanwhile, Chelsea stated yesterday that they have started re-laying the turf at Stamford Bridge after completing three home matches in six days. The Premiership champions do not host a game until March 11th, with work expected to be completed before Tottenham arrive.
