Chelsea played their first "official" match in front of spectators with Andre Villas-Boas at the helm, beating Pompey 1-0 thanks to a Tal Ben-Haim own-goal (still thinks he plays for the Blues, maybe).
There were plenty of youngsters on the bench and on the pitch, which probably helped deprive the reserves in their 6-1 loss to Crawley today, and with so much experimenting it wasn't quite the promising Chelsea performance we were perhaps hoping for.
Some good bits: Daniel Sturridge in the first half and Yossi Benayoun in the second both looked promising. Young Tomas Kalas looked solid in the center of defense with Ivanovic. Hilario gave away and then saved a penalty. Bosingwa's crosses actually weren't bad. Errr... yeah.
Torres was pretty anonymous apart from the cross that led to Pompey's own-goal. Frank and Drogba anonymous as well. Billy Clifford was a bit shaky, but we can give him a pass considering he's been out for a while with injury and he probably still needs to find his rhythm, especially amongst the first team.
It's the first match of preseason, so the boys may still be a little rusty after all that time spent out in the sun on the beaches. Brains still a bit fried and all that. I'm looking forward to seeing Villas-Boas implement his own tactics a bit more with the players he actually plans to use on the pitch at the same time. The problems from last season still seem to be popping up - creating few chances, not knowing the best way to get the ball forward, crap finishing, stupid defensive mistakes - but there's still time to work them out.
My final question: Where is Alex? He wasn't part of the squad against Wycombe and he wasn't in the squad today.