Chelsea might have walked away 1-0 victors and opened up a 5 point gap over reigning champions Manchester United but the game was marred by some poor refereeing and a whole lot of ill-will.
The game was always going to be feisty, Chelsea play a very physical game and have the bodies to match up with anyone in world football while United won’t shy away from a fight.
Such a pity as both sides can play beautiful football when they aren’t preoccupied with systematically hacking their opponents down.
Ivanovic was the first of six bookings in this charged up contest, his tackle on Giggs which made contact with the Welshman’s knee as he was breaking down the left wing was appalling, the reaction of German captain Ballack to the booking even more so.
He protested Martin Atkinson’s decision with a selection of words that any amateur lip-reader could recognise right in the official’s face while on the sidelines Carlo Ancelotti and Ray Wilkins expressed their displeasure, indicating they thought Sir Alex Ferguson had played his part in the booking.
The next card was the biggest farce of the EPL season so far. Drogba and Evans “contested” a high ball just inside the box. Evans did his best Cantona-Impression catching the Ivorian, quite cynically and deliberately in the chest.
Drogba may have a history of going to ground too easily and of making a big deal of minor knocks but he certainly was well within his rights to remain on the ground after this challenge.
The Ivorian could have had broken ribs and possibly even sustained internal damage such was the force of the blow but the referee, in what is surely the single biggest stuff up of the season showed Drogba yellow and let Evans off scot-free when justice would have been a red card to Evans and a penalty to Chelsea.
Perhaps realising his mistake Atkinson gave a very marginal free kick against Fletcher just minutes after while replays suggest the Scot won the ball.
Lampard’s delivery was good but United should have been able to defend it, indeed Wes Brown – who had a fine match – was perfectly positioned only for Drogba to foul him, the ball ended up in the back of the net and the protests began immediately from United culminating in a booking for Rooney which seemed strange as his were hardly the loudest of the complaining voices.
The goal didn’t really fan the flames; it was more like throwing a 44-gallon drum of petrol on to the fire.
Carrick clipped Essien, Joe Cole hit Fletcher in the head off the ball, Evans went through the back of Carvalho, the fouls came thick and fast but the referee had long since lost control, he couldn’t book everyone but he couldn’t stop the fouls either.
Ballack was probably the worst offender, coming up against the raw pace and core strength of Anderson the German’s old age showed as he repeatedly fouled United players.
Ivanovic wasn’t much better and nor were Carrick and Fletcher for United as they hacked at their opponents every chance they got.
Indeed some of the smaller players found it impossible to get into the game.
Deco, all 5’8 of him was unable to influence the match at all as the referee offered him no protection on the ball.
Patrice Evra who also stands at just 5’8 suffered a similar fate as he constantly bombed down the left flank only to be knocked off the ball, on one occasion he was thrust horizontal into the air in his attempt to dribble past Ivanovic, the referee just waved away his complaints and ordered play to go on.
What was so disappointing – apart from United’s defensive 4-5-1 – was the fact that this game was bound to turn out this way and yet the referee didn’t have control from the off.
Just because Howard Webb is overseas doesn’t mean England’s second and third best referees should be so poor and Atkinson is generally a good referee, he just had a very ordinary night.
Further, something must be done about the timekeeping issue.
After the Manchester derby the topic was bandied about in the press for a week and since then we still haven’t seen any consistency as Chelsea substituted Alex in time-added-on only for Atkinson to allow an extra 3 seconds.
Such a drab and violent affair between the two best teams in the land resulting in such an ugly game is no advertisement for the Premier League.
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