Pat Nevin: Winning through #viaChelseaOfficial In his column this week, Chelsea legend Pat Nevin assesses the overcoming of QPR and looks ahead to consecutive away challenges… Saturday’s game against QPR was always going to be a trickier affair than most people thought beforehand. Harry Redknapp was never going to be as expansive and open as he had been earlier in the season, it would have been football suicide. It was no surprise that he put out a fairly hard-working team that would dig in defensively as much as possible, hoping for success in the odd break forward. It almost worked too, but the quality and intelligence of our lads won through in the end. The quality obviously came from the finish by Oscar and the ice-cool penalty taken by Eden Hazard, while the intelligence came from the latter when he won our penalty kick. I say intelligence because it wasn’t a dive, but it was a case of getting his body across the inrushing defender and taking the hit. I hate diving and never did in my career but I regularly did what Eden did because I knew if the defender was being too rash and too reckless when I had right of way because I was in front of him, the outcome would be a spot kick. This is what Eden did, it wasn’t a deliberate infringement but it was still definitely a penalty. There will be games like this throughout the coming weeks and months, especially at Stamford Bridge, simply because teams are very aware of Chelsea’s strengths this season. It can sometimes lead to a different atmosphere, an understandably tense instead of a celebratory or encouraging vibe around the ground for parts of the game. Happily it didn’t pass on to the players who got the job done efficiently in the end. It will be a totally different set of problems over in Slovenia as Maribor stand in the way of our early qualification from the group stage. I must say I was surprised at how naïve and disjointed they were in the first game, having given everyone else they had played a very tough time in their European campaign to date. I still expect this will be a less-than-straightforward task, simply because home advantage always makes a massive difference. The question that has always bothered me, even as a player is, why is this so clearly the case? Among the usual reasons given are; playing at home gives a sense of familiarity and security, you also have the home fans urging you on to lift your spirits. You might even expect that the referee and his officials will be influenced to some degree by the intimidation in the stadium. This is not to denigrate the officials, it is just human nature to give the tight decisions to the side that are already on your back. Even so it is still the same 11 players against 11 and the pitch is roughly the same size and covered in grass. So what is going on? Much of it is purely psychological, away from home most teams set up a little more defensively than the way they do at home, so before the referee even blows his whistle for the first time some ground has been conceded. There is also the intangible effect that the home crowd has on individual players. Even though I didn’t think I cared whether I was at home or away when I played, there was an extra lift if, when I got the ball, there was a rise in the decibel level as the fans expectation rose. It not only made me want to try things, it also gave a huge confidence boost. If they believed in me, then it was almost impossible not to believe in myself. Chelsea fans have always been very special in that way, in five years playing at the Bridge I can honestly say I can’t recall the fans ever being negative towards me even when I was making mistakes or having a bad day when the flicks and tricks were not coming off. They simply urged me to have another go believing I would beat the man or make the telling pass next time. Chelsea fans have always been ultra-forgiving of skilful players, as long as they know the effort is being put in. I wonder if the likes of Eden Hazard is fully aware of all that yet, I suspect he is. When things are looking bleak, he knows that we believe in him still and that it will only take one moment of his genius to make all the difference, just as it did on Saturday. This of course all sounds pretty obvious, but it doesn’t happen at every club for every player. There are those that are far less forgiving and quicker to turn to moaning instead of encouraging. As such for Eden there certainly is no place like home! I suspect that when the crowd are needed they will be there giving it everything. The other particularly positive thing for Chelsea players is that we have, and have always had, a spectacularly big and vociferous away support. There have been countless times when we have travelled and either out-sung the home support or given them one huge run for their money. This might not happen at Maribor, but certainly at places like Anfield and Old Trafford it is and always has been noticeable and extremely helpful. In fact the only downside is that because of the desire for our fans to travel to wherever we may be, it means it is hellishly difficult to get tickets for these games. Can you tell I’m still struggling to acquire tickets for the upcoming trips to Sunderland and to Newcastle! Talking of Liverpool we meet them at the weekend up at Anfield in the early kick-off and once more we will be trying to match them shout for shout from the stands. I wonder if they will be as vociferous as they usually are in the Kop. As I write this I am in Madrid to watch Brendan’s men taking on Real in what is a quite frightening game for the Reds after what happened to them in the reverse fixture at home. If it does go badly for them tonight then all the shouting and backing their famous home support might give them, could fail to lift the players’ spirit come Saturday. Our travelling fans will be in top voice no matter what, simply because they always are. Last week I asked which was the last team (before Shrewsbury) from the fourth tier of English football that Chelsea faced in a competitive match? There were actually two such teams in the same month which flummoxed a few of you. In January 2007 we played three cup games, the first was against Macclesfield Town in the FA Cup and then there were two Carling Cup semi-finals against Wycombe Wanderers. So Wycombe was the right answer. Well done to those who got it right, but there can only be one winner and the randomly chosen chap this week is Ashley Manton from Canada. Today’s quiz question is; having played for both clubs, which player has the most combined appearances for Liverpool and Chelsea? Answers as ever to me at pat.nevin@chelseafc and the lucky winner drawn from the correct answers will receive a Season Review DVD signed by one of the players.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 13:05:57 +0000
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