GOAL!!! Chelsea 2-1 Manchester City (Lampard 82pen) Lampard missed one at Newcastle the other week, but he thumps this one down the middle with a fury. Hart dives low. Chelsea lead!
Simon Marcroft: “One night I went to pick up some things I’d left at the dry cleaners for longer than usual – like two weeks – because I’d been busy at work. When I got home I noticed an extra pair of black dress pants that didn’t look familiar. So I ran back to the cleaners. The owner was a Korean man who spoke broken English:”Oh, sorry mate I think these are someone else’s.”"No. They are yours.”"I don’t think so. I don’t recognize them.”"Yes. they are yours.”"No. You take them.”"No. You take them.”"Look I don’t want the money back, I just want to hand the pants back coz they’re not mine, these have a faint checked pattern – I don’t have a pair like that”Etc etc until he finally gave up and took them, rather bemused.Two weeks later getting dressed for a night out with my wife – she asks: “Where’s your good pants, the black ones with the faint checked pattern?”
So as it stands … would either side be too disappointed with this result? Probably not, I’d venture. Chelsea succeed where all but two others have failed and take points off Manchester City, City stay undefeated, stretch their lead at the top and tick another Big Club™ off their list of teams to play. Let’s hope the two teams don’t see it that way, though. Goals, goals, goals … that’s what we want.
64 min: Here’s David Hannah: “I had just moved to Hong Kong and was hung over and late for work. Living on HK island and working Kowloon side I thought it would be best to leg down to a cross harbour taxi rank. I got in the back of the taxi and tried out my best Cantonese:
Well, that was a superb effort from Chelsea. They could, perhaps should, have been two down before the half an hour was played, but they clung on and turned it round with that old inexorable will, not to mention a large scoop of tactical nous.
63 min: Romeu goes into the book for a fairly innocuous challenge on Balotelli. And Mancini has indeed made that change – Kolo Touré replaces Aguero. He goes to right-back. Zabaleta heads to left-back.