Brentford 2-2 Chelsea

Fernando Torres scored late in the second half to keep holders Chelsea in the FA Cup. The striker’s first goal since the 8-0 win over Aston Villa rescued a draw for Chelsea after an uncomfortable afternoon at Griffin Park.

Following their midweek elimination from the Capital One Cup by Swansea, a tie against local Brentford could have been the perfect way to get back into form and confidence, but in reality it was the League One side who were the better side for much of the game.

Following the recent stretch of poor weather in West London, the pitch at Griffin Park was full of muddy, treacherous areas, and for much of the first half the visitors seemed totally unable to cope with the conditions and an energetic, organised Brentford team.

The lack of comfort in the Chelsea ranks was exemplified by a mix up between the fit again John Terry and goalkeeper Ross Turnbull, which resulted in the keeper picking up a back pass in the area, though the resultant free kick was hit over the bar.

This was a sign of things to come however, and with the Chelsea defence looking uncertain and disorganised, Brentford were able to take the lead just before half time. Frank Lampard was caught in possession just outside his own area, and while Turnbull saved Harry Forrester’s initial shot, on loan forward Marcello Trotta put away the rebound.

Juan Mata was introduced for Marko Marin at half time, following another disappointing performance from the German, and the switch helped Chelsea to assert some semblance of control over the game.

It was a moment of individual skill from Oscar though that made the breakthrough. His close control under pressure on the edge of the area was exemplary, and there was nothing Simon Moore in the Brentford goal could do to keep out the Brazilian’s right-footed strike.

For a while it looked as though the holders would be able to up the tempo of the game and move away from their hosts, but Brentford had other ideas, and took the lead with a penalty with less than 20 minutes remaining. Clayton Donaldson played a through ball towards substitute Tom Adeyemi, who got behind the Chelsea centre backs and pushed the ball past the onrushing Turnbull before being felled by the keeper. Though Turnbull was only given a yellow card, there was nothing he could do to keep out Forrester’s penalty.

It took until the final 10 minutes for Rafa Benitez to call on Demba Ba from the substitute bench, having also brought on Cesar Azpilicueta for Branislav Ivanovic. The Senegalese was introduced at the expense of Ryan Bertrand, and it was his strength and work rate that presented Torres with his chance, holding off challengers before poking the ball to the Spaniard, who curled his shot past a helpless Moore.

Though Chelsea had appeals for a penalty turned down after Mata’s cross struck Harlee Dean on the arm, Brentford held on for a well deserved, and lucrative, replay at Stamford Bridge, which looks to be held the weekend of February 16/17, following Chelsea’s midweek trip to Prague in the Europa League.

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Chelsea Need Solution to The Torres Situation

Torres has endured a tough two years at Chelsea

Torres has endured a tough two years at Chelsea

Fernando Torres has been at Chelsea for two years now. In that time he has won the FA Cup and Champions League, and has played under four different managers.

In this time, he has played in 104 games in all competitions and scored 26 goals. While the return of one goal every four games is problematic, more of an issue is the impact that Torres’ goals, or lack of, has on the rest of the team.

The statistical picture: Chelsea have played 120 games since he joined the club in January 2011. They have won 62 (51.7%), and scored 233 goals (1.9/game).

Those 26 goals have come in 20 of the 104 games the Spaniard has appeared in. In those 20 games, Chelsea have won 17 of them, with the draw at Barcelona and defeats against Man United and Man City making up the other three. This season, the only time Chelsea have failed to win a game in which Torres scored was the Community Shield game against City. Over the course of Torres’ Chelsea career, this means that the Chelsea winning percentage in games in which he plays, and scores, is 85%. On top of this, the club have scored 78 goals in those 20 games (3.9/game).

This means that Torres has not appeared in 16 games over his Chelsea career. In those games, the winning percentage is 56.3%, with 2.2 goals per game scored. This means there is not a dramatic difference between winning percentage in games in which he has appeared and games in which he hasn’t.

Where the numbers get interesting is when you look at the games in which Torres has appeared, but not scored. There have been 84 of these, but there have been only 36 wins (42.9%), with 1.4 goals per game scored. This seems to suggest that while Torres playing in a game is not a firm indicator of the likely result, so far in his career it is clear that Chelsea need Fernando Torres to score goals if they are to win matches – though if he were to appear less often, it would be interesting to see how the win stats were affected.

On top of this, when looking at the opponent and match situation in which Torres has scored, there is more for Chelsea fans to be concerned about. Torres has scored the only goal for Chelsea in one match so far in his time at the club: in the 3-1 away defeat against Man United in September 2011. He has never scored either the winning or deciding goal. The closest he came to this was scoring the second at the Nou Camp, which while guaranteeing Chelsea qualification for the final was not vital for that outcome, as they would still have won on away goals. The other important goals he has scored are the first goal at Arsenal earlier this season and the first in the 3-2 home win over Shakhtar Donetsk

Otherwise, he has scored a lot of his goals in games where the result was either already decided, for example: his hat-trick against QPR (the 3rd, 4th and 5th Chelsea goals in a 6-1 win), the 2nd and 3rd in a 5-0 win over Genk, the 2nd and 4th in a 6-1 win over Nordsjælland, or the first goal in games where Chelsea went on to win comfortably: 8-0 over Aston Villa, 4-1 over Norwich for instance.

These are the concerns that grow out of the numbers: can Torres be relied on to score important goals against big teams? Not really. Can he be relied on to score the deciding goal in a close game? No.

There is a real problem at Chelsea currently with their £50m striker. He is not scoring regularly or against decent defences. At the moment, he is fast becoming a flat track bully, capable of netting against poor or already beaten defences, but is no longer the game changing centre forward he was during his time at Liverpool. He cannot be relied on to do something on his own or make a chance out of nothing in a big game – something which his predecessor Didier Drogba was especially good at, even when otherwise ineffective or playing poorly.

It seems that Torres will be staying for the rest of this season, and will be competing with Demba Ba for the lone striker role. In the summer though, it would be in the best interests of both the club and the player for him to be moved on to a club where he is not playing under the pressure of his price tag, his goal record, or lack thereof, or of the crowd growing tired of a lack of improvement in his performance after two seasons. Until the end of this season, though, it will be interesting to see if he can hit form again and whether or not that form will appear in any of the important games for the club. I doubt it, but we shall see.

Swansea 0-0 Chelsea (2-0 Aggregate)

Eden Hazard was sent off as Swansea qualified for the final of the Capital One Cup with a 2-0 aggregate win over Chelsea at a snowy Liberty Stadium.

First leg goals by Michu and Danny Graham meant that the Swans were within touching distance of a first major final, and they were able once again to blunt any semblance of Chelsea attacking play.

With Demba Ba recalled for Fernando Torres  and supported by Oscar, Hazard and Mata it seemed that Rafa Benitez had put out his strongest attacking line up, but they were unable to get past a resolute Swansea defence, marshalled by the superb Ashley Williams.

There were appeals for a penalty after only seven minutes, with Ba going over under a Ben Davies challenge, but referee Chris Foy decided, fairly, not to award a spot kick. The home side wasted little time moving the ball downfield to create chances of their own, with Cesar Azpilicueta and Petr Cech blocking efforts by Jonathan de Guzman and Michu.

Swansea cup goalkeeper Gerhard Tremmel was not totally untested in the Swansea goal, saving from Ramires and Oscar before Gary Cahill’s header was cleared off the line and Ba fired over before half time.

The second half continued in much the same vein as the other three periods of the tie, with plenty of Chelsea possession leading to very little threat on the Swansea goal. Ba again had the best effort, but curled his shot wide of goal from the edge of the area.

The game’s main talking point though will be the dismissal of Hazard. Following another failed attempt at attacking play, the ball rolled out behind the Swansea goal line, where one of the ball boys appeared to lie on top of the ball rather than return it to play as quickly as the Chelsea players would have liked. This frustration was manifested by Hazard, who appeared to kick out at the ball boy, as he lay on the ball.

After several minutes delay Chris Foy produced the red card, to little protest from the other Chelsea players. While the two apologised after the match, it remains to be seen what action the FA will take.

Though Benitez brought on Torres, David Luiz and Ryan Bertrand for Oscar, Branislav Ivanovic and Ashley Cole there was no added shape, structure or incisiveness about the Chelsea attacks. The best chance of the last few minutes saw an excellent save by Cech from a Nathan Dyer shot, and the hosts were comfortable at seeing out the remainder of the game, and will face Bradford City at Wembley in February.

As for Chelsea, this is now the fifth competition that they have been eliminated from this season, and with the Premier League crown out of sight, the only hopes of silverware for Benitez and his team will be the FA Cup and Europa League.

2013 Dakar: Peterhasel, Despres, Nikolaev and Patronelli Win

Dakar Rally

The 2013 Dakar Rally wound its way to the from Lima, Peru to the finish line in Santiago, Chile during the first three weeks of January.

The Rally, formerly known as the Paris-Dakar Rally, was held for the fifth time in South America, having moved from its traditional route through North Africa due to security concerns.

The race is formed of four categories, defined by the different vehicles used: Cars, Motorcycles, Trucks and Quad Bikes, with the later only being added once the event moved to South America.

In the cars category, the winner was Stéphane Peterhasel and his co-driver Jean-Paul Cottret of France, for the Mini All 4 Racing Team. The pair retained the title they won last year, and also collected Peterhasel’s fifth Car title, to go along with the six career wins in the Motorcycle category. These 11 titles make him the most successful competitor in the history of the event. Out of the 152 cars that started the event there were 90 that finished.

Since 2005 the motorcycle title has been going back and forth between France’s Cyril Despres and Marc Coma of Spain, and this year was no exception, with Despres retaining his 2012 title, his fifth overall title, and a twelfth win in a row for a KTM bike. Since Coma was unable to compete this year due to a shoulder injury picked up on the Morocco Rally in October, it will be interesting to see if he returns to challenge Despres in the 2014 edition.

Following the Iveco PowerStar team’s win in the Truck category last year with Gérard de Rooy at the helm, the question was whether Kamaz would be able to return to the top step of the podium, having won all but three of the Rallies since 2000. They did it in style, with Kamaz trucks occupying each of the top three spots in the rankings. Russia also returned to form in the trucks, with Eduard Nikolaev taking the title with compatriots Ayrat Mardeev and Andrey Karginov rounding out the podium. Vladimir Chagin, the “Tsar of Dakar” still remains the most successful single-category winner in the history of the event with seven wins to his name.

The Patronelli brothers Marcos and Alejandro, have now won four of the five quad titles, with only Josef Machácek the other title winner. This year it was the turn of Marcos Patronelli to pick up the title, following Alejandro’s successes in 2012 and 2011. Yamaha are still the only manufacturer to win a quad title.

The 2014 Dakar is looking to be held again in South America in January next year, but the dates and locations are still to be confirmed. For more information on the 2013 Dakar, visit http://www.dakar.com/

Chelsea 2-1 Arsenal

Chelsea held off a second half comeback from Arsenal to pick up their second league win at home under Rafa Benitez at a snow-covered Stamford Bridge.

First half goals from Juan Mata and Frank Lampard put Chelsea 2-0 up at half time for the second time in a week. Once again the away side dominated the second half, but this time they could only manage the one goal through Theo Walcott.

For much of the first half the attacking play of Mata, Oscar and Eden Hazard saw Chelsea on top, but the first real chance fell to Olivier Giroud, who fired just past the post. The miss was punished immediately. Ramires and Francis Coquelin clashed in midfield, and with the Arsenal man down Cesar Azpilicueta’s long ball was taken down by Mata with his first touch and fired past Wojciech Szczesny with his second.

Santi Cazorla saw his long-range effort palmed wide by Petr Cech and Hazard saw a shot saved before Szczeny brought down Ramires for a penalty. The Pole was lucky to escape with a yellow card, and could do nothing about Lampard’s penalty, his 41stin the Premier League, second behind Alan Shearer. The goal also took him within seven of Bobby Tambling and the record for Chelsea goals.

While the first half was relatively comfortable, the second half was a totally different story. Much like the game against Southampton the energy and intent came entirely from the visitors after the break. Cech was called into action to make saves from Walcott, Per Mertesacker and Giroud before the breakthrough came. Walcott found space behind the Chelsea defence to pick up Cazorla’s though ball and finish past Cech for his ninth league goal of the season.

With memories of Wednesday fresh in the minds of both sets of fans there was an increased level of nervousness among the home support. The nerves could have been settled first by Fernando Torres then Demba Ba. Torres’ burst through the Arsenal centre-backs, but his touch was too heavy going into the box and Szczesny was able to gather. His replacement Ba did little better, rounding Szczesny before seeing his shot blocked by the diving Thomas Vermaelen.

It was only down to some excellent last ditch defending from Branislav Ivanovic and Gary Cahill that Chelsea were able to hang on, though Giroud did see a header land on top of the goal in the closing minutes as Arsenal failed to capitalise on a series of late corners. Only a second domestic win at home for Benitez means that Chelsea are now eleven points clear of Arsenal, who remain outside of the Champions League qualification places.