The scoreline flatters Chelsea, every honest Blues fan will admit it.

The positives: we were fantastic during the first 45 minutes. Defensively immaculate from front to back. Chelsea weren’t exactly at their best and unforced errors littered their play, but take nothing away from the Villa boys who all knew exactly what they had to do and carried it out to the letter.

Of course, you know a major game officiated by Howard Webb would not be without controversy. Somehow he managed to turn away a nailed on penalty call early on when Gabby was dragged down right in front of him. All I’ll say is that we should have been awarded a penalty. You still have to score them, but I’m sure we’d all back James Milner to have put us ahead.

Yes, it was an astonishing display of incompetence from Webb, but it would be foolish to claim we’d have won it from there. It would certainly have had an impact, but there was a lot to play and Chelsea showed their true quality in the final half hour or so.

In the end, it was a touch of fortune that sent Chelsea ahead. Richard Dunne’s 65th minute headed clearance from a corner fell to John Terry just outside the area who scuffed his driven shot wide, but straight to Drogba who just had to shape his body to re-direct the ball into the net.

With Villa now chasing the game and having expended a great deal of energy already, it was always likely that Chelsea would be able to punish us. It took until the 89th minute for Florent Malouda to double the lead though when he snuck in at the far post to deftly volley past Brad Friedel. Credit where it’s due. It’s something we lacked throughout the game – a deadly delivery and cool finish.

Frank Lampard added the third deep into injury time, after the minimum 4 added minutes had been played for what it’s worth. I know, it’s a minimum, that’s why I said it. It’s 3-0 in the record books, but that really just reflects Chelsea’s ruthless streak more than their part in this game.

That said, it would be unfair to describe Villa as “huffing and puffing”, but for all our dominance, we never really stamped any real authority on the game. Yes, we were clearly the better side for much of the game, certainly the first half, but we didn’t really control it. That’s a subtle, but key difference.

However, despite what the scoreline says, MON’s men certainly looked to put the ghosts of the 7-1 defeat behind them and gave an account of themselves that they can be proud of. I’m proud.

We still lack a real goal threat, someone looking to get on the ball and influence the game when we can’t find a breakthrough. The bench still doesn’t offer much in the way of options either.

And again, for anyone who stopped by for the live blog; my sincere apologies. I always use 2 computers and 3 screens to keep track during games, but I arrange the set up in different ways depending on whether the video feed is coming over the internet or through through the TV. Today it was the TV, but for reasons best known to the executives, they elected not to cut anything when the previous programming ran long and broadcast the game on a 5 minute delay. I wasn’t able to switch things up in time.

It’s never happened before and I can’t describe how frustrating it was. I don’t do live blogs all the time, hopefully the next one goes much smoother. Unfortunately, that won’t be the FA Cup final.

So we fall back on the old cliche of being able to concentrate on the league. MON will certainly need to find a way to pick the boys up one more time for the last push. That’s what they’re paid for though and there’s everything to play for.

Once again, we have every reason to be extremely proud of our club, but they just weren’t quite strong enough. We’ll get there though.

Oh, and finally, the travelling Villa fans are also more than worthy of a special mention. Once again you did us proud, thank you!!

UTV!!

[Pic Credit: Fandfeedr]