Toothless Chelsea miss Drogba and Essien

Sometimes when you go through a bad patch you simply need one of those games where you get the three points and forget about the performance. This was one of those games. The statistics will show that Portsmouth only had eight attempts to score all game compared to Chelsea's thirty but how they made us sweat.
O'Hara looked extremely dangerous and after conceding the equalizer Chelsea were very lucky not to concede again when the bizarre Clattenburg overruled an offside decision from the linesman when Portsmouth had three players on their own on the edge of the box. He also seemed to have invented a new interpretation of the advantage rule more akin to rugby union that football.
How we missed Essien and Drogba last night - Kalou was ineffective up front on his own and Ancelotti understandably began the game with no wingers due to the lack of height in attack.
Mikel had a woeful match following the inexcusable abuse he received from some our so-called fans during the Everton debacle... he suddenly looks like a player short of confidence despite his majestic performance against Arsenal. Applauding his substitution will not help, although I still don't understand why he doesn't go up for corners being one of the tallest players on the pitch!
Despite Joe Cole's recent performances I would have him in the team any day instead of Deco - in fact I would prefer Malouda over either of these two players at the moment.
The heads are down but the only bit of cheer during the match was Lampard counting all the empty seats in the Portsmouth sector just before he took a corner towards the end of the first half - although he would have looked like a right idiot if he had missed his penalty!
I couldn't bear to be in the stadium when they tried to rouse some applause for the back stabber Grant but last night he looked far more tactically astute than he ever seemed to be at Chelsea and on that performance you would think Portsmouth stand a good chance of staying up.
It's not all negative. Ashley Cole was world class and Borini's performance as a sub was encouraging - he did more in his few minutes on the pitch that Kalou did throughout the whole of his appearance. But the face the first goal was set up by a cross from our centre back who was on the right wing tells its own story.
So more doubts over the manager and some real worries about the strength of the squad... West Ham on Sunday which feels like a match that will be another struggle.