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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.