Chelsea 2-0 Wolverhampton Wanderers: Goal By Goal

1-0 Chelsea (+0.77 pts): Chelsea's Yuri Zhirkov is in possession on the edge of the final third, perhaps 15 yards from the left touchline. He passes left to Nicolas Anelka, who's in a reasonable amount of space and not picked up immediately by the defence. Anelka drives towards the penalty area, attracting the attention of a pair of Wolverhampton defenders before cutting back sharply and simultaneously playing a reverse pass into the path of Zhirkov. The Russian, who had made a penetrating run straight to Marcus Hahnemann's byline, is immediately charged down and plays the ball back towards the centre of the area, where Florent Malouda is free thanks to a jinking run to shake off Christophe Berra. Malouda calmly sidefoots the ball straight into the middle of the net for Chelsea's first goal. The pass Anelka plays to Zhirkov is clearly the decisive moment, but the movement by all three of Anelka, Malouda, and Zhirkov is superb throughout.

Figure 1: Good interplay between Anelka and Zhirkov on the left side sets up Malouda's opening goal.

2-0 Chelsea (+0.27 pts): Branislav Ivanovic receives a lofted pass from John Terry and plays the ball forward to Salomon Kalou. Kalou moves back towards the halfway line, plays a quick one-two with Michael Essien to free up some space going forward, and spots Didier Drogba coming back from an offside position. Berra is not anticipating Drogba's run back into playable territory and is thus slow to react - Nenad Milijas sees the danger but it only serves to freeze him between marking Essien and cutting off a possible path to Drogba. Drogba receives the ball from Kalou, who sets off on a dead sprint towards the right side of the penalty area, and immediately passes to Essien. With multiple defenders in close quarters, Essien threads a pass into the Wolves box (despite a despairing dive from Stephen Ward), and Kalou is able to finish with aplomb. It was excellent movement from Chelsea, but the second Berra forgot where Drogba was the defence was in deep trouble.

Figure 2: A series of quick passes leaves Kalou one on one with Hahnemann for Chelsea's second goal.