Bowyer continues Chelsea's blue period

Birmingham City 1 Chelsea 0:CHELSEA'S BLUE period continues. While their performance at St Andrew's was a considerable improvement on the meek display against Sunderland at Stamford Bridge six days earlier, a defeat is a defeat and the champions have now been beaten three times in four games.

The inconsistencies of their rivals may be keeping Carlo Ancelotti’s team at the top of the Premier League for the moment but next month Chelsea will play Tottenham, Manchester United, Arsenal and buoyant Bolton in quick succession, and they urgently need to get the injured John Terry and Frank Lampard back in action if the present decline is to be halted. After Saturday’s game Ancelotti estimated that Lampard is at least two weeks away from recovery following his hernia operation while Terry’s aches and pains are being assessed from day to day.

The goal in the 17th minute that won the match for Birmingham probably would not have been scored had Terry and the suspended Michael Essien been playing.

Terry would have been more alert to the danger when Cameron Jerome outjumped Branislav Ivanovic to reach Sebastian Larsson’s cross and nod the ball down into a huge space between the centre-backs, and Essien would have picked up Lee Bowyer’s late run through the middle to beat Petr Cech.

As it was, Chelsea would still have won comfortably but for exceptional goalkeeping by Ben Foster allied to excellent defending by the Birmingham centre backs, Roger Johnson and Scott Dann. Foster made one error at the start of the game which nearly gave Salomon Kalou a simple goal but thereafter was beaten only once, and that by a looping header from Didier Drogba which hit the angle of post and bar.

After the 3-0 mauling by Sunderland Ancelotti described Chelsea’s performance as the worst since he had been in charge, but on Saturday he went out of his way to praise his players’ attitude.

“The team didn’t play well against Sunderland,” he said, “but today we didn’t deserve to lose. We didn’t win because we were unlucky and because Ben Foster played a good game. We have to take confidence from the way we played. It is just the result that is disappointing.”

Certainly Chelsea lacked nothing in determination against Birmingham and penned their opponents in for much of the second half. Yet as the attacks became more desperate, the more they lacked accuracy and incisiveness, and it was here that Lampard’s calm probing passes, not to mention his powerful shots, were missed.

“A month ago, when we were doing well, I said that there would be difficult times ahead,” Ancelotti reflected. “This is one of those times.” He is hoping Chelsea are able to postpone surgery on Terry’s back, and that Alex, who defied a knee problem to play against Birmingham, can also avoid the immediate necessity of going under the knife.

So close is the Premier League as a contest this season the win, their first in five league matches, lifted Birmingham from the last three by some distance.

“There is a paranoia when you’re in the bottom three,” said their manager, Alex McLeish, “and there’s so much fickleness in the game. November isn’t the end of the season but you just have to accept things that are said and get on with it.”

McLeish has done well at St Andrew’s but even good managers sometimes have aberrations. His stands 6ft 8in tall and goes by the name of Nikola Zigic, off whom the ball bounced awkwardly until the Serbian striker was substituted 18 minutes from the end. When Serginho, the galumphing forward who led Brazil’s attack in the 1982 World Cup, was taken off Joao Saldanha, the Brazilian journalist who had also managed the national team, observed drily that “now the ball is round again”. Certainly it seemed less square once Zigic had departed.

Guardian Service