Chelsea’s UEFA Champions League hero Didier Drogba wound back the years just a little on Wednesday as he had nervous fans cheering another important equaliser; this time against lowly Leicester City, whose first half lead had threatened to rain on the West Londoners’ Premier League parade.
37-year-old Drogba, whose equaliser against Bayern Munich laid the foundation for the Blues’ penalty shoot-out victory in the 2012 Champions League final, again pulled one out of the bag to settle the nerves of a side on the brink of a Premier League title with weeks to spare.
Battling Leicester have been the form team of the division of late with four consecutive wins that have transformed the East Midland outfit from near-certainties to return to the Championship to some pundits’ favourites to avoid the drop.
Nigel Pearson’s men would probably have preferred not to be facing a Chelsea side buoyed with the confidence engendered by a 10-point cushion and near-perfect recent results against the only teams with a notional chance of bridging the gap. The Foxes had a great April and can enjoy a relatively favourable run-in, but defeat, even to the champions elect – no disaster in absolute terms – remains an unwelcome interruption to their flow of confidence.
Leicester were good value for the lead they managed to take into the half-time break as a result of a rare Mark Albrighton strike. The former Aston Villa wide man took advantage of a slip in defence by Cesar Azpilicueta to fire home past Petr Cech, deputising for an unfit Thibaut Courtois, just before the interval.
Chelsea manager Jose Mourinho changed tack in the second half, just as he has done so often, and it was apt that one of his favourite Chelsea players; the man he brought in from Olympique Marseilles to spearhead his attack over a decade ago and the man he brought back to the club from the relative obscurity of Galatasaray in Turkey to supplement his squad, restored parity.
After a few promising substitute appearances early on in the season bringing a handful of goals, the years in Didier Drogba’s legs had recently been starting to show. Injuries to the strikers ahead of the Ivorian in the pecking order had pressed him into action in recent weeks more often than both player and manager would have planned.
But Drogba’s strength guile and unrivalled ability to play with his back to goal have not left him. It was with a sense of relief that he managed to briefly escape the close attention of Leicester’s central defenders to latch on to a cross from right back Branislav Ivanovic and sweep the ball into Kasper Schmeichel’s net.
At 1-1, Chelsea were clearly in the ascendancy and spurned several realistic chances to take the lead. Brazilian Willian, who has been a revelation since Christmas, became Chelsea’s engine-room to compensate for the close attention being given to newly crowned Players’ Player of the Year Eden Hazard and chief orchestrator Cesc Fabregas.
And it was Chelsea’s other hero and another Mourinho favourite John Terry who came up with the goods as he has done at the ‘wrong’ end of the pitch so many times. Eleven minutes from what might otherwise have become an ignominious anti-climax, central defensive partner Gary Cahill powered a header towards goal from a Fabregas corner and although Foxes ‘keeper Kasper Schmeichel tipped his header away, Terry was once again ‘Johnny-on-the-spot’ to poke home from two yards.
The Londoners sealed the result a few minutes later when Cesc Fabregas danced his way down the right flank and cut the ball back for Ramires to smash the goal of the game into the top corner of Schmeichel’s goal.
A win at the weekend against London rivals Crystal Palace will see Chelsea crowned Premier League champions for the fourth time. Even a point will mean Arsenal, the only other team with a mathematical chance of taking the title, will have to win all their five remaining games and hope Chelsea are unable to scrape even another draw in what will be three more to go.
The unlikeliness of this scenario might well have Arsenal players and coach concentrating on the other fish they have to fry – retaining the FA Cup at the end of May. The prospect of playing in a cup final often has the effect of altering players’ commitment levels in ‘less important’ games leading up to it. Arsenal players are not renowned for their ruggedness, and I therefore suspect we’ll see few examples of them putting their bodies on the line in their last five league fixtures, beginning away at Hull City on Monday.
