What a Game!!!

I unfortunately missed out the Barnsley - Liverpool event by about 5 mins. Ghurram tried to get me to the action with an SMS but i missed it:( .Hopefully he can add to this post when he is free.
Anyways Barnsley love me a lot so they set up a bigger show when i was watching.

Wave after wave of Chelsea attacks were blunted, everyone knew it would take just one opportunity, one mistake, one goal for everything to fall in place for Chelsea.
They might have surprised liverpool with a late goal but back to back matches with 2 of the fab four of EPL, come on it's too much to ask of a championship side.
The format gives opportunity for upsets but 2 great ones ?? Even Terry would have dismissed the probability especially after the show they put up against Olympia cos.

Everyone Enjoyed the game

And the experts too gave them very bleak chances of being Giant-Killers again.
Game Preview

The match stats clearly show that Chelsea had the upper hand and could have taken the game away very easily with 15 against 3 shots on target.It was clear to me that the super-team would just drop the ball once into the net and that would be it.
And then the clock struck 66 ... Goal -- Odejayi. Team -- Barnsley. I jumped out of my chair(as a matter of fact i wasn't sitting on one :) ),clapping hard and laughing out loud at this unbelievable piece of sports legend being created.

I hadn't heard of Barnsley until they beat Liverpool and i couldn't help smiling at the fact that Odejayi choose to cause Chelsea heart-burn after not scoring for hold your breath ... 28 games.Guess they have an appetite for big games and big teams.
But the real test was ahead , they had sweaked past Liverpool by scoring at the death, but here they had 24+ minutes to defend a legendary win against a world-class team.

And so the attacks began, left , right and centre , shots, lobs , runs.And yet Steele adjudged the best player of the previous round drew on his confidence and stood tall , maybe the Chelsea players might have just noticed that the Goal was diminishing into a single point of certainity as time ticked by.

They did all they could , their runs and shots at the Goal from outide the box were always stopped just a few yards into the box.If ever you wondered how could 300 men fight against a million , well this was your answer.The defenders just threw their bodies around , mud and sweat mixed .After the Goal some of the Chelsea players tried to play it the physical way, but seems like every Barnsley player knew that Chelsea had to get through each one of them if they needed to score.

And that's why i loved this game, players throwing themselves around not caring if they lived for another day, no , this day was what they had lived for , this was the match they were born to play. Wondering how i am writing about people whom i didn't know till yesterday, i think i just connect to them in their unfettered efforts to get their win which they so richly deserved. How many times have you watched sports contests when the chips are down or the inevitable is about to happen and you see players' shoulders dropping , thinking about the next game when they can get back at them.And that's why this was so different.I felt them play out their hearts-out , just like we played out our first hockey tournament finals against Delhi, we were not expected to win and we won it !! and that too without allowing them to enter the scoring area, they had won the semifinal 4-0 against a team which had beaten us while we had scrapped through 1-0 and man-o-man how we played, their strikers were blunted out , every tackle found its place and while defending we were running 2x tiring out their strikers:) , it was probably the best match we ever played , one i will never forget and so will i never forget the night Barnsley defeated Chelsea.

Unexpected start to Premier league

Where would the top 4 teams of EPL stand after 3 games? After the tussle between ManU & Chelsea in the community shield( ManU winning in the shootout) and Chelsea having injury problems, one expected the newly crowned champions to strut their stuff and show why they have been the most successful english club since the league began, but as always matches aren't decided by rankings (otherwise it would be too boring:) ).

So after 3 games ManU is hovering around the relegation spots and that's unexpected, but to beat that the only team with a 100% win record(if u were out of sync for the past couple of weeks, a big surprise:) ) are ManU's city rivals Man City, some real magic being worked on by Sven:P, and with Rooney out ManU have a tough job ahead trying to retain the title.

A look at the table shows Chelsea the contender at 7 points to ManU's 2 and the other big two Liverpool & Arsenal 4 apiece with one game in hand. Really disappointed at arsenal's show against Blackburn, silver lining would be Eduardo jelling in well with the flow. My guess it would be battle between Chelsea & Liverpool battle this year, unless ManU do something in the next couple of weeks, and Arsenal even though are my team, have lost some 'X' factor with Henry moving out, sorry guys, even though i hope you would it seems unlikely, waiting eager for further surprises, signing off for now.