It was mission accomplished for the Blues on Saturday evening, as they returned to London with three points from a tough visit to Blackburn.
Andre Villas-Boas selected a starting lineup that featured a front three of Mata, Sturridge and Malouda, a midfield of Ramires, Mikel and Lampard, and a defence of Ivanovic, Terry, Alex and Cole.
As usual, Petr Cech was in goal for the Blues but he wasn’t called into action very often in the first half. In fact his first serious task was to recover from a nasty collision with Ashley Cole. Luckily, after some lengthy treatment, Cech could carry on and he had to face a Blackburn corner which he cleared easily.
Other than his injury, Cech didn’t have too much to deal with in the first half. Nor did the Blackburn goalkeeper, Paul Robinson, as the Blues failed to test the Rovers goal.
In the second half Fernando Torres replaced Malouda but it wasn’t the Spaniard who helped the Blues get a goal! Defender Branislav Ivanovic crossed a perfect ball into Frank Lampard, who dived down to head the ball in and give Chelsea the winning goal!
As the match came to a close both teams had chances to score but neither could hit the target, so the Blues returned to London with a good win!
Blues boss AVB was very pleased with the team’s performance and happy that we came away without conceding a goal: 'The clean sheet was important but it was important to win the game no matter what.'
'A 2-0 win would have been better, we were close to it, especially at the end through Fernando Torres, but we couldn't get it and had to suffer a little bit but managed to hold on to the clean sheet,’ said the manager. ‘It was good to get back to winning ways.’
We now head into an international break, so the Blues don’t play again until 20 November, when we welcome Liverpool to the Bridge!
Even though we aren’t playing for two weeks, remember to check bridgekids for all the latest Blues news!