CHELSEA 0 CITY 0
FA Carling Premiership
22nd November 1993
Attendance 10,128
Ref M Reed
City Coton, Phelan, McMahon, Curle, Kernaghan, White, Sheron, Quinn, Vonk, Simpson, Lomas – subs Griffiths(63), D Brightwell(unused), Dibble(unused)
Chelsea Kharine, Clarke, Sinclair, Kjeldbjerg, Donaghy, Barnard, Peacock, Newton, Wise, Stein, Shipperly – subs Johnsen(unused), Cascarino(unused), Hitchcock(unused)
FROM THE PRESS BOX
DAVID LACEY WRITING IN THE GUARDIAN 23RD NOVEMBER 1993
George Orwell would have played last night’s goalless game in room 101, which is reserved for the worst thing in the world: rats in the case of Winston Smith, football for the likes of Chelsea and Manchester City.
Orwell once described sport as war without the shooting. Last night’s teams contrived to produce a bore without the shooting, or the thinking, perceiving, creating and finishing.
The match was on Sky it should have been played at the bottom of the sea, preferably the Mariana Trench. Five of those involved at Stamford Bridge last night could be playing in the 1994 World Cup, a frightening thought.
To an extent this shambolic travesty of a football match was a product of its context and its environment. Neither side has won for six matches and Chelsea had lost their last half dozen League games. The evening was bitterly cold with a crowd of just over 10,000 spread thinly around the ground.
Both teams could take some satisfaction from the outcome, more, certainly than the shivering spectators, who stamped their feet, blew on their knuckles and wondered if Monday night would always be like this. At least Chelsea partly arrested their decline and City did not decline further still.
The players met like lost souls in an arctic waste. With Glenn Hoddle, player-manager and playmaker, still missing Chelsea again had to make up in effort what they lacked in guile. Wise gave them hope with an occasionally telling centre but with nothing like Quinn’s height up front they had to rely on getting the right sort of passes to the feet of Stein or Shipperley.
With McMahon calmly marshalling Manchester City’s movements and White, Lomas and Simpson quick to get forward in support of Quinn and Sheron, there was more promise of a goal at the other end. But much of the play drifted drearily back and forth across the halfway line.
There was no real sign of a score until just before the half hour when Newton’s pass found Peacock running through a gap in a squared defence. Coton, swift to narrow the angle, made a sharp save but Peacock should have scored.
Three minutes later, at the other end, Lomas might have done better than waft the ball high over the bar after Vonk had nodded it down for him. The game needed goals like the human race needs oxygen.
In fact the crosses of White and Wise might have produced one apiece in the space of a minute shortly before half-time. Chelsea could do little about White’s growing dominance over Donaghy on the City right and Quinn was unmarked as he met the winger’s well-flighted centre. He should have scored, he headed wide.
Shipperley did better when he met Wise’s equally accurate ball from the right, heading down hard towards goal but Coton made light of the save.
Twice Griffiths, who replaced Sheron, nearly ended the stalemate. His was the misplaced pass that gave Shipperley a clear run at Coton. a poor touch allowing the City goalkeeper to make yet another save, and his alertness that seized on a Knock-down from Quinn in the Chelsea penalty area before the shot went wide.
The bulldozers are due to begin demolishing the North Terrace at Stamford Bridge today. They could have been usefully employed on the pitch last night. Both teams can surely do better than this.