Wigan expose Chelsea failings

THE only previous time Chelsea have dropped points at the DW Stadium, they went on to beat Wigan 8-0 later in the season on the way to winning the title.

Such has been the change at Stamford Bridge in the 27 months since Carlo Ancelotti suffered a first defeat in English football at the hands of Wigan that the six survivors from that day must look back on that period as some sort of distant dream.

No longer is the opening goal against a team like Wigan simply the start of the avalanche.

For all Andre Villas-Boas’ big talk about attacking football, his midfield at the weekend was so lacking in physicality that the final half an hour was not spent trying to keep count of the goals flying in, but waiting for the game to finish.

Villas-Boas may have impressed with his unique grasp of the English language since his arrival in the summer but it is actions such as this that speak so much louder.

His reasoning for sitting back rather than going for the throat was that, “We didn’t have a lot of momentum in transition”.

Discussing his team’s point afterwards, Martinez, whose side have conceded three goals to Everton and Bolton this season, admitted Wigan will not pick up points by picking up clean sheets.

But even though the Spaniard was tactically spot on at the weekend, even he must have been surprised to see Mohamed Diame and, to a lesser extent, James McCarthy dominate Chelsea’s midfield to such an extent.

So almost 30 minutes after Daniel Sturridge had thumped Chelsea in front, the visitors were glancing at the clock when Petr Cech, who admitted that he was “not proud” of his part in the equaliser, fumbled HugoRodallega’s cross before Jordi Gomez tapped in from close range.

After the momentum gained from of the 2-1 defeat of Manchester City a week ago, it was another step back. And rather than looking to build on four straight wins when they travel to Tottenham on Thursday, they are now hoping for a positive result to keep them clinging on.

Cech, 29, has been around forever but he was reluctant to think too deeply about the reasons for Chelsea’s absence of authority.

“In the past, we have had a 0-0 at half time, scored two goals and then gone on to score six,” he said. “But also, we lost 3-1 here. This is a stadium where we have always struggled at some point but I felt we were on the way to get three points.

“You can lose some points and then catch up. There is still a long way to go and when you drop points somewhere you need to regain them somewhere else.”

It was an even contest until Chelsea opened the scoring with the kind of ruthless goal that has marked their previous visits to the DW Stadium.

Ashley Cole’s raking pass picked out Sturridge behind Maynor Figueroa and the striker, running at speed, took one touch before finding the bottom corner of the net.

And yet half an hour later, Chelsea were trudging off with a point.

Wing-backs went out of fashion more than a decade ago when full-backs started to be asked to get through the same amount of work with more protection from clones of Didier Deschamps and Claude Makelele.

But Martinez is making his slant on the system work well. There is fluidity throughout the side and while he accepts Wigan will always concede plenty of goals, they are looking far more solid, and actually look good going forward themselves.

He was even more pleased with his team’s pressing performance after seeing them fold to a 4-0 loss to Arsenal earlier this month.

Martinez said: “Against Arsenal we were very good for 20 minutes and then we had a mistake or disappointment and we were deflated but this was completely different because we learned from that experience.

“We’re extremely pleased that we had a reward.

“We’re not a team that is going to win games with clean sheets. We have to concede goals because we’re going to be playing expansive football and we’re going to make mistakes.”