Newspaper round-up: Chelsea v Fulham

Were we actually playing on Saturday? You’d be hard pressed to know from reading the newspapers over the weekend – and today. Predictably, every piece focused on the trials of our friends up the road, speculation about Roman, Avram and Jose, and endless discussions surrounding Drogba’s sending-off and Terry’s trip to casualty…Anyway, here’s what the major media outlets made of the match.

Chelsea’s season hit rock-bottom yesterday, wrote Rob Beasley in the News of The World, with a 0-0 draw at home to Fulham in which “Didier Drogba was sent off, John Terry suffered a fractured cheekbone and the players were booed by their own fans”.

Even though Avram Grant narrowly avoided the ignominy of losing his first home match after succeeding Mourinho, it was hard to imagine a more calamitous first day in front of his own supporters, agreed Paul Newman in The Independent.

“In the end Grant must have felt grateful to emerge with a point, even if the boos at the final whistle made it seem like a loss,” he wrote. “Mourinho had been unbeaten in all his 60 home Premier League matches in charge of Chelsea, and it would have been a huge blow to his successor’s credibility if he had started his Stamford Bridge career with a defeat.”

The Mail on Sunday’s Ian Ridley thought the tone was set in the first minute when Andriy Shevchenko “ballooned Salomon Kalou’s low cross over the bar”, and soon afterwards “challenged Drogba” for the same pass from Claude Makele.

But it got worse. “From a free-kick 30 yards out, Shevchenko drove the ball low and straight into a two-man wall before turning another low cross from Kalou wide at the near post,” added Ridley. “When he did get a weak shot on target, the Fulham fans gave an ironic cheer.”

One of the papers must mention our boys in a minute…Ah! Here we go.

Lawrie Sanchez’s men hadn’t managed to keep a clean sheet so far this season, but there was no great secret to how they extracted this one, thought Duncan Castles in The Observer: “Organised and resolute defensively, Fulham thwarted a Chelsea side long on attackers but short on the cohesion that was once their trademark.”

Fulham certainly defended with spirit, agreed Newman in The Independent, who also pointed out that Dempsey had the best early chance, heading wide. “Aaron Hughes and Carlos Bocanegra were rocks at the centre of defence, while Alexey Smertin and Steven Davis gave as good as they got in the centre of midfield,” he wrote.

It wasn’t until the second half that Chelsea threatened, opined Joe Lovejoy in the Sunday Times, when Joe Cole sprinted to the byline on the right and delivered a cross which invited Kalou to score. “He seemed to have done so, at close range, only for (Kasey) Keller to spirit the ball away, via his right-hand post”.

But they couldn’t get through, and when Drogba was dismissed – after receiving a second yellow for a high boot on Chris Baird – the visitors began to “scent three points”, added the Mail on Sunday’s Ridley.

“Paul Konchesky burst through and Petr Cech saved his shot with a foot,” he reported. “Substitute Diomansy Kamara then screwed a shot across goal and Dempsey narrowly failed to turn it home as Fulham finished strongly.”

These were two “glorious chances” for the visitors, added Julian Bennetts in the Sunday Telegraph. “Defeat would have been harsh on Grant on his side,” he wrote. “But , on a day when just about everything that could go wrong did, he must be thankful for small mercies”.

Late news from the hospital confirmed that Terry had a depressed fracture of the cheekbone, but it was not the only thing depressed, noted Shaun Custis in The Sun, as “40,000 Blues supporters felt the same way”.