Chelsea - Wigan: Did The Best Team Win?

     Ah, the age old debate of possession football. Or as many a pundit would say "the right way of playing football."
Fair to say that the game against Wigan brought up that debate in a less clear manner. Many would say that Wigan were desperately unlucky not to get anything out of the match. Even I would agree, though I think we ought to look at it a little bit closer.




Possession
Chelsea and Wigan shared equal possession. 50%-50%. Fair to say if you watched that game you might be slightly surprised that the two teams shared the possession equally. Wigan controlled plenty of the play, but like Swansea yesterday, it came to nothing. Most of the time anyway. It was all very pretty and well worked, but we all know possession doesn't win you games. Something we shall look back on in a little while...


Shots
Goals are always the statistic that counts, but I would say shots help a bit too. After all, you need them to score! Chelsea had 19 shots to Wigan's 13. Not surprising that Chelsea had more, but quite surprising at the amount that Wigan had. They came with no fear. Chelsea had 10 on target whereas Wigan had 6. That of course means it was 9-7 on the off target front. Watch the game again and you'll see that the majority of Wigan's on target strikes were from distance. That's always preferred when a team's shooting - much less likely to score than if in the box. However, take a look back at Chelsea's shots and you'll see that they were much more clear cut. To be honest, Al Habsi - as last season - had a blinder against us. Another thing to talk about in a little while...


Goals
The only stat that really matters. Chelsea 2-1 Wigan. Now let's be very clear here, the first goal should not have been given BUT Chelsea were on top and had a few shots prior to the goal. Once again we're fortunate against Wigan at the Bridge. We ought to sign up the lino on right! Then, with about 10 minutes left, Wigan inevitably score. Now, Bertrand had a great game, but he could have done better. He got dragged out of position and didn't really know what to do. Great goal. Well done Diamé. But then, as we did last week, we stepped up 2 minutes into stoppage time to score a winner. I'll be fair to the lino this time, when Torres took the shot, there were about 4 players in front of of him and he wouldn't have seen it. Probably. Cue relief


What Really Mattered?
In the end, we deserved to win. They always say the team with the most shots deserve to win and we did win. 
The little while has come. Wigan played great, had plenty of possession and were pretty on the eye. But other than that, what did they really do? Of course the clichés all come out. They were brave, fought, keep going but are people just giving them a smooth ride because decisions went against them and they're a small club. I would say so.
As Swansea did yesterday, they had possession, a lot of build up but no end product. Okay, our performance wasn't great but even then we had more shots, better chances equal possession to Wigan. As they say, big clubs get decisions but I also say, small clubs get sympathy. 
Performance wasn't pretty but it was exciting - at the end anyway. But the stats don't lie. We didn't look like we deserved it, but the stats say we did.
We like doing it the hard way. 
                                                    As always.


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Posted in: Reviews, Stats