Matic Secures Vital Win

Big Nemanja Matic is no stranger to playing against Sporting Lisbon, having been previously plying his trade with Benfica. Tonight, on his return to Portugal, Chelsea's midfield colossus showed his inaccurate, toothless colleagues how to find the back of the net, as the big Serb headed home the only goal of the match shortly before half time.

Matic's timely intervention rescued the visitors whose hapless attackers missed a whole host of golden opportunities to put the contest beyond reach. As a consequence of the wastefulness of Schurrle in particular, as well as Costa and Oscar, the away team had to cope belatedly with a short spell of pressure from the hosts in the dying minutes which threatened to salvage an improbable point. Jose Mourinho and the team's supporters should never have been forced to suffer such torture, but regrettably Schurrle and his fellow attackers did their utmost to both create chances and miss them against a comprehensively outplayed home team. Fortunately the west Londoners hung on to the one goal lead, with their cause being boosted by Schalke's failure to win at home to mediocre Maribor. The Premiership leaders will now have two back-to-back outings against Maribor. On paper, such occasions ought to amount to shooting practice, and God knows our goal-shy forwards need to be an awful lot more clinical against the unrated Maribor.

At least Monsieur Courtois accumulated a second successive clean sheet, which is a source of growing optimism. Anyhow, before the double header against mediocre Maribor, the Blues will return to the safe haven of the Premiership and do battle against the dangerous but inferior Arsenal. Hopefully the attackers will have put their shooting boots on in order to inflict some nice brutality upon the Chelsea wannabes of Arsenic this Sunday.

Final score: Sporting Lisbon 0 CHELSEA 1; half time: 0-1. Tuesday 30th September 2014.

CHELSEA goal scorer: Matic

CHELSEA team: Courtois, Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Filipe Luis, Matic, Fabregas, Hazard, Oscar, Schurrle, Costa. Used substitutes: Willian, Mikel, Salah.