Last weekend, only few or if we are going to be more realistic with ourselves, no one thought Chelsea will comfortably beat Wolves FC, at worst, in front of their own fans, but behold it happened.
Chelsea comfortably won the nemesis or problems of all giant English teams 5-2 at the Molineux stadium this past Saturday. It was the first time in recent years Chelsea beat the team with relentless and confident players by that large score line. Everyone was surprised by the final score but it portrayed a picture which was pointing to one handwriting on the wall, “Do not mess with the blues”.
Next in line for Chelsea to unleash their wrath on was Valencia of Spain in the Uefa Champions League. The Spanish team will be coming into the match at the back of a coincidental 5-2 defeat at the hands of FC Barcelona. The sad/bad news facing Valencia recently is the sacking of their wonderful coach Marcelino who brought them out of relegation zone and gave them the recognition they are enjoying today. The actual reason why Marcelino was sacked still eludes me but it doesn’t change the fact that for a while, Valencia will be less strong than they once were with Marce and it showed against Barcelona. Although they scored two goals but they showed little spirit in holding off a Frenkie De Jong and Ansu Fathi inspired Barcelona, two young lads who dealt the apparent third or fourth most successful team in Spain, a serious blow.
With Valencia going to meet Chelsea with such spirit and apparent badly polluted atmosphere, it was safe to assume that Chelsea will easily bypass the Spanish team but how wrong we were.
Valencia travelled to Stamford Bridge in London and returned Spain as worthy winners of an interesting tie. The blues started the match on the front foot and almost broke the deadlock on several occasions in the first 20 minutes but couldn’t and gradually Valencia grew into the game. The second half was an equal tie in terms of chances created but Valencia created the more danger. Chelsea however were awarded a penalty after VAR called for a handball on Valencia but Ross Barkley would go on to hit the crossbar and make sure Valencia return to Spain as group leaders.
It is not surprising how difficult Chelsea found Valencia to be because football remains best played at Spain and until Spanish teams decide to abandon football, football will continue to be best played at Spain.
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