Before the game, I've said several times, that I couldn't care less about the result. Both managers were supposed to field those with little to no practice and, come on, no one cares for the CoC anyway, right?
Not exactly. While Mourinho stuck to his promise and played Willian, Eto`o, De Bryune and the likes, Arsene Wenger`s side only fell a couple of players short of resembling our usual squad. We didn't see Hayden, Akpom or even Gnabry. The only young and promising face, who fails to make the bench under normal circumstances, was Miyachi. He and Bendtner (and Jenks, as it later turned out) were our only weak links in an otherwise very competitive side. These three guys, however, prevented our entire team from finding our rhythm.
I don't like to point at any specific players as a reason for a loss or a poor performance. I am firmly of the opinion, that football is a team game and you only win or lose matches because of a combined effort of all the players. True, sometimes a moment of brilliance from an individual can save us the points or bag a winner in the dying seconds, but the end result almost always depends on how good the whole team fared for ninety minutes. Almost.
We gave the ball away right from the start for Chelsea to knock it about. They didn't come up with much, but neither did we. We tried hitting them on the break, something that worked extremely well with other teams recently. This time, however, our right flank was basically non-existent, thanks to erratic Jenkinson and out-of-his-depth Miyachi. To be fair to them both, they tried hard and Miyachi was actually quite good at getting himself into dangerous positions, but couldn't, for various reasons, make it count. Bendtner, meanwhile, represented a beta-version of Giroud, unable to pull off passes, that could have opened up the opposition. He was useless, in other words.
It was unsurprising that, when the goal came, Jenkinson was at fault. He tried to pass the ball back to Fabinski, under-hit it and it fell to Azpilicueta. The Spaniard made no mistake.
After the restart, we looked only marginally better. We dominated possession and territory, but were just as ineffective up front.
Chelsea allowed us to take the ball and let us come at them. Cazorla and Ramsey had some half-chances, but not much came out of it. And, just when we seemed in control and on course to equalise, Chelsea scored again.
The throw-in fell to Mata and he produced a quite brilliant shot from outside the penalty box, which ended up in the net.
Wenger, in a surprising move, threw Giroud and Ozil for Bendtner and Miyachi, but it didn't bring about the desirable effect. Our midfield looked exhausted after putting in a lot of effort trying to set up either Bendtner or Miyachi up.
The best chance of the half fell to Giroud, only for his shot to be blocked by Schwarzer. It was soon clear, we won't be able to get back to level terms. Park (!) came in for Ramsey and it meant even Wenger had given up.
So, out of the cup, which didn't mean much anyway, but the manner in which we crashed out, is a bit unnerving. Chelsea didn't exactly played a bunch of kids, but our side wasn't light on experience either. Maybe it's Bendtner, who is to blame, because our midfield worked relentlessly to supply our attack. I think the team on the whole looked legged and exhausted, which is another troublesome thing, given we play Liverpool in two days.
I do hope, this game is really nothing to worry about. That it is another competition and that by no means will this result influence our future performances. However, I can't help but think it's not that simple psychologically-wise. The same players as always played the game and lost it. That must have had an impact on them. Let's just hope, they'll get over it and bounce back quickly.
Until later