Payback time: We let the boss down, warns Chelsea's Malouda

30 September 2009 01:41
Chelsea closed ranks in this divided Cyprus capital to insist the first defeat under Carlo Ancelotti will not trigger the sort of slide which ended in Luiz Felipe Scolari’s dismissal. Ancelotti sat with the air of a man not entirely abreast of the conversation as Florent Malouda explained how the players held an inquest into why things had gone so badly wrong at Wigan and why it is important to avoid embarrassment against Champions League rookies APOEL. ‘When you lose the way we lost to Wigan, nobody can be happy with that,’ said Malouda. Malouda Blue backlash: Malouda and Co were on the receiving end of a rant from Ancelotti ‘The players know it wasn’t a good performance and not the level we expect of Chelsea. We did not put all the ingredients in to win. We were always reacting and late with everything.’ Speaking of being late, Malouda apologised for his nasty challenge on Wigan’s Mario Melchiot. ‘I missed the ball, I was late. I told him sorry and I told the referee that. Mario knows I didn’t have any intention to break his leg.’ But the thrust of his message was about eliminating the errors and winning again. ‘It was not a good performance,’ he added. said. ‘We try to analyse things and look at mistakes, even when we’ve won. Now we have an opportunity in another competition. We’re first in this group and we come here to win. We are not now going to lose every game. We prepare to win and we don’t want to be in trouble. 'If we don’t win, we’ll have more questions to answer but we know what we’re capable of. We want to make another winning series.’ Ancelotti confessed to ranting in Italian at his players at half-time at the DW Stadium and has since forced them to watch the video nasty of the game. Malouda said: ‘Everything went wrong. It would be a surprise to see him laughing on the bench.’ Last season, under Scolari, Chelsea were unbeaten for their first 12 games but one defeat, at home to Liverpool in October, sparked a slide. They won just 11 of the next 23 and Scolari was gone by February. Although he scoffed at the idea, this amounts to Ancelotti’s first test, avoiding the same trap at a time when his squad is stretched. ‘I don’t want to know what happened last season,’ said Ancelotti. ‘I’m focused on this season. We lost one game, but that can happen. We have to fix it. I haven’t worked with these players for long but I like their attitude. I don’t think they’ve lost that.’ Michael Ballack and John Mikel Obi are injured, Didier Drogba and Jose Bosingwa are suspended, Joe Cole and Deco are not ready to start after injuries and Ashley Cole trained on Tuesday with a dressing on his right knee. Yuri Zhirkov will step in if the England left back suffers any reaction overnight. Paulo Ferreira and Nemanja Matic are not in the Champions League squad and with a transfer ban in place for their allegedly illegal recruitment of teenager Gael Kakuta, Ancelotti’s options suddenly look limited. Youngsters Sam Hutchinson, Jeffrey Bruma and Fabio Borini are in Cyprus to bolster the squad. It adds up to the prospect of a tricky task against APOEL, fired up for their first Champions League home game in front of a 22,000 full house. They started their Group D campaign with a goalless draw away to Atletico Madrid and Chelsea’s visit has caught the imagination in the Greek half of a city split since the Turkish invasion in 1974. It would be trickier for Chelsea if APOEL did not have problems of their own. Four of their best players are injured but Nuno Morais will play against the club he left two years ago. Morais, 25, started just one game in three years at Stamford Bridge, appearing from the bench in eight others, but he witnessed the Jose Mourinho era when the club won two Barclays Premier League titles, two Carling Cups and the FA Cup. He was also on the bench for some of Chelsea’s most colourful European nights — at Barcelona for the tunnel row between the managers and against Bayern Munich, when Mourinho hid in a laundry basket to evade a UEFA ban. ‘It was different seeing him hiding in the skip,’ said Morais, who also recalls vividly the semi-final defeat at Liverpool, when Luis Garcia won the game with a goal which may not have crossed the line. ‘That was the first time I could feel my bones shaking, that atmosphere at Anfield,’ he added. At least Morais knows Chelsea can be beaten.

Source: Daily_Mail