FA Cup 6th Round: Chelsea v Stoke City Preview
COME ON CHELSEA
By Since66
March 7 2010
After the Money Citeh mauling and debacle of a second-half performance, Chelsea couldn't have asked for a much tougher test than the one they will face against a Stoke City side, at Stamford Bridge, who are still reeling from the criticism of last week's Shawcross tackle on the unfortunate Aaron Ramsey.
The world and his dog will be watching to see if Chelsea show their mental strength and bounce back, like JT on Wednesday night after he suffered the taunts of the England boo-boys, or slip from a mini-crisis into a deep crisis with three successive defeats.
Hardly wonderful preparation with Inter and Jose's return on the horizon (Tuesday 16th March to be exact).
Preparations haven't been solid this week because of the International friendlies and Chelsea were rocked further with the news that Jose Bosingwa has been ruled out for the rest of the season and reports suggest that Michael Essien will ALSO miss the rest of the season because the knee injury sustained whilst Essien was away with Ghana hasn't healed as well as expected.
It was Ray Wilkins who faced the assembled media at Cobham and he stated quite clearly that there was 'no dip in form.'
He said, "We are in the first week in March, and 19 other Premiership sides would sooner be in our position than theirs. That's where we are, top of the Premiership playing in the quarter-final of the FA Cup and very pleased with the situation in which we find ourselves.
"We're not having a dip in form. Results haven't quite gone the way we'd have liked. We've just lost a little bit of concentration at certain times and will recitfy that this week.
"We're happy with the way we've played but not the goals we've conceded. We've created a number of chances, that on another day we would have scored, but we have scored a number of goals and there aren't too many clubs that have scored as many as us, so from that aspect we're happy with the way things are going."
Speaking about the visit of Stoke, Wilkins said, "If you make errors you will lose goals, it's as simple as that, and we have to be extremely concentrated in what we do. We'll play a lot worse than that (this season) and win (We have.... haven't we?.... Ed).
"We hold this competition in such great esteem that we want to be there in the final so I am sure we will select the best possible team we can."
To avoid any anxiety and nervousness hanging around Stamford Bridge I wish for a fast start (something like the recent Sunderland game will do), but this is the FA Cup and I suspect we will be in for a dramatic afternoon, just like the one in January 2009, when Chelsea scored two very very late goals against Stoke to win the game 2-1.
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The defence for a change looked solid and i had no doubts that we would win this one.
Aston Villa in the semis should be a good game and knowing O`Neil it will be very tactical.
We should get through that game and look forward to yet another Final and hopefully retaining it.