Source: Telegraph
Chelsea's Florent Malouda demands return to winning ways against Apoel Nicosia
Chelsea face Apoel Nicosia here this evening in the Champions League still smarting from that defeat and are determined to not allow a repeat of last season’s collapse under Luiz Felipe Scolari.
“We spoke because it was not a good performance,” Malouda said of the aftermath to the Wigan game. “But we also speak together when we're winning. We try to analyse things and look at the mistakes. We do that even when we've won. We want to correct what's wrong, and this is a good opportunity. We want to start another winning run.”
Chelsea had recorded eight victories in a row before that loss and it will be a measure of their resilience under new manager Carlo Ancelotti as to how they react.
Last season they won only 10 of their next 23 matches after suffering a first defeat under Scolari - which had followed a 12-match unbeaten run at the start of the season - whereas Chelsea’s first loss under Jose Mourinho was followed by eight victories.
“When you lose the way we lost against Wigan nobody can be happy with that,” Malouda said. “The players know it wasn’t a good performance and not the level we expect for Chelsea. We did not put all the ingredients in to win. We were always reacting and late with everything.
“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 lost his temper for the second time this season at Wigan - he was angry during half-time in the pre-season friendly - but it was the first time he had ranted at the players in Italian such was his annoyance.
“Everything went wrong,” Malouda said. “It would be a surprise to see him laughing on the bench.”
The Cypriot champions have performed heroically so far in this competition, eliminating Partizan Belgrade and Copenhagen to reach the group stages, and then drawing away to Atletico Madrid in their opening Group D fixture.
However, they have started poorly in their domestic league, and sit seventh, with their only win recorded last Saturday. Apoel are also suffering an injury crisis with four key players out.
Nuno Morais will play against the club he left two years ago. The 25-year-old Portuguese started just one game in three years at Stamford Bridge, appearing from the bench in eight others, and was one of Mourinho’s first signings.
He was also on the bench for some of Chelsea’s most dramatic 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 matter-of-factly.
For Chelsea this evening 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 illness and 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, while Ancelotti may not want to risk Cole ahead of the visit of Liverpool on Sunday.