Source: Telegraph
Chelsea too strong for Coventry and ease in to FA Cup semifinals
Now it's back to the long shot of Championship promotion and a match at Ashton Gate for Chris Coleman's side while Guus Hiddink's team moves on to the San Siro on Tuesday, dreaming of European glory. As a preparation for their match with Juventus this tie was next to useless – unless, of course, Claudio Ranieri is of a mind to get his Italian all-stars to start pumping it long like Coventry.
The ingredients for an upset yesterday were all there on Coventry's side: they have been in good form at home recently, beating the Championship's top two Wolves and Birmingham, not to mention Blackburn Rovers in the previous round. Coleman was confident and it wasn't difficult to see how the Ricoh Arena could become a cauldron for the opposition if Coventry's tails were up. Perhaps they just needed a lucky break, say, a deflection into Petr Cech's goal off someone's knee, a la Gary Mabbutt in '87. No, on second thoughts, perhaps not.
Chelsea were just too good, which is not to say they were great, even if Hiddink did punctuate his post-match comments with liberal use of the word 'beautiful', as the Dutch tend to do. They gave the impression they had an extra engine in reserve never mind extra gears had Coventry come up with something special. Coleman admitted as much, but did have one or two gripes afterwards.
Firstly, he criticised referee Steve Bennett's decision to allow two Chelsea players – Didier Drogba and Alex – back onto the field of play prematurely after sustaining injury, from which point Chelsea broke upfield and scored the match-clinching second goal – through Alex - and secondly, he objected to what he saw as Bennett's smugness.
'He was too smug towards us,' said Coleman. 'Talking to my players – my senior players – they were saying he was very, very friendly with some of the Chelsea boys. I understand it's Chelsea and sometimes you can be in awe of great players – and they are great players – but he had to do a job. They [the Coventry players] weren't happy with him, they weren't happy with his attitude.'
Instead of the flying start, which City so desperately needed, they got a false one. A backward header by Ben Turner to Scott Dann after 15 minutes should have presented no difficulty to the Coventry captain, but instead of dealing with it emphatically, he dallied and was dispossessed by Drogba. The Chelsea striker is in the mood these to make his own chances without being handed one on a plate and he nonchalantly took the ball wide of Keiren Westwood in goal before wellying home his sixth goal of the season.
'He is dangerous,' said Hiddink, who does a nice line in understatement, 'and it is good for the whole group that we have him back. He still makes little mistakes, but he can improve. For me he is a guy who has been working hard from day one. I don't want to judge what happened before.'
Coventry's back four never really recovered from that and the insides of an old central defender like Coleman must have been churning on the touchline. Coventry didn't want for effort but the quality just wasn't there. Once in the first half Leon Best, the hero of their win over Blackburn, went on a winding run that his namesake would have been proud but then finished with a shot that was more Clyde Best than George Best.
At times in the first half it was as much as Coventry could do to get out of their own half never mind threaten Cech's goal; perhaps it was his lurid orange outfit that repelled them. About the closest Coventry came to making a game of it was when Clinton Morrison came within inches of connecting with a speculative overhead kick to a long throw from Aron Gunarsson after 66 minutes.
Four minutes later the game was up for them. Drogba and Alex banged heads in the Chelsea area – not that they needed to – and had to wait on the touchline for permission to return to the fray after treatment, which they did a little too promptly for Coleman's liking. To make matters worse, Drogba was the one who sent substitute Ricardo Quaresma on his way with a right-wing break and from his cross Alex powered home like the goalscorer he isn't.
