When I saw this in real-time I missed the first incident and only saw Drogba writhing on the floor. I was worried for a few seconds; regardless of Drogba’s antics you don’t want to see a professional footballer badly injured and I was worried he had suffered a spinal injury or something that could keep him out of the game for a long period of time.
But then all the Chelsea players walked away from him, seemingly unconcerned with his fate. The replays showed that he wasn’t faking it (he had the wind knocked out of him at the very least) although he did milk the collision, and the yellow card he received was unjust.
Last year United fans were complaining about Ronaldo’s reputation getting the better of him, it happens with Drogba as well.
From the United-Chelsea game on Sunday (incident photos after the jump).
and then afterwards:
This wasn’t a penalty, or at least not as much of a penalty as Terry’s move at the opposite end of the pitch (for the record, neither incident merited a penalty). But in all the hustle and bustle of the game, the Drogba and Terry incidents and the parties involved (the young v the old) highlighted what was at stake in the game.
If anyone has the gif / video clip from the Terry incident, please share in the comments.
fully backed up by which stats???
Goals – Chelsea 1 Man Utd 0
Shots On Target – Chelsea 6 Manchester United 2
Passing Success – Chelsea
Tackle Success – Chelsea
Territorial Advantage – Chelsea
Possession – Manchester United with 53.1%
Manchester United played well but in no way did they dominate the game in any area that is significant i.e goals or shots.
http://www.skysports.com/football/match_report/0,19764,11065_3162395,00.html
Remember there are damned lies and statistics
Kristian,
I’m not sure BD is lying, when you look at Man U’s total shots was 18 to Chelsea’s 12, and also Man U had 7 corner’s to Chelsea’s 0.
I think it was a very tightly contested match that I always thought 1 goal would nick it, in this case Chelsea got the goal.
I’m proud of the way man u contested the match despite Ferdinand and Vidic being missing, I don’t think one team dominated the match, it was very close.
Gary – I agree with your assessment of the match. I didn’t think either side threatened the goal too much, and the only really clear chance was valencia’s which came after chelsea’s goal.
On evans tho, the guy should be hit with a 3-5 match ban given the current climate of things. It was clearly pre-meditated and just was a cowardly and disgusting thing to do. This sort of thing is FAR worse than diving.
@gaurav- no chance of a penalty(outside the box).cole was not fouled.fletcher clearly touched the ball.evans was clear favourate to win d ball & drogba was not even looking at d ball.he was steaming into evans.
Ref could’nt rule it in favour of drogba bcoz evans was in the air,won the ball & drogba running towards him.in football rulebook it is specified that extra protection is to b given to d player who is winning the ball.
@Mickey-look at d chelsea-barca match(ucl 09). drogba was in his own & roled around the ground on atleast 10 occations.
And for the match Man Utd dominated the match & the so called deadliest attack of bpl looked like pussy cats in front of united’s second string difence.it took chelsea the help of the ref to win the community sheald as well as this one.
@Kristian: You’re right about damned lies and statistics! I was going with this from the BBC:
Shots on target: Chelsea 9 Man Utd 10
Shots off target: Chelsea 3 Man Utd 11
Corners: Chelsea 0 Man Utd 7
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/eng_prem/8343319.stm