Chelsea were back to winning ways at Ewood Park on Sunday defeating Mark Hughes? Blackburn Rovers side 2-0. A Frank Lampard penalty and outstanding goal by second half substitute Didier Drogba gave Jose Mourinho?s men just their third away win in twelve games on the road.

After the midweek defeat to Middlesborough it was a much needed victory for the Blues after Manchester United kept their 100% record going against Watford on Saturday afternoon.

New signing Khalid Boulahrouz made his first start at right back whilst Petr Cech and Michael Ballack returned from injury.

Chelsea didn?t start well and were almost behind after Morten Gamst Pedersen?s deflected free-kick deceived Cech but just cleared the Chelsea cross-bar.

Just before halftime the best passing movement of the match climaxed with Lampard slipping in Kalou who was clearly impeded from behind by Neill, but as at Ewood Park last season Chelsea were denied a clear penalty.

But just a few minutes into the second half Chelsea finally broke the deadlock. Lampard floated his free kick into the Blackburn box but debutant Dutch defender Ooijer hauled John Terry to the ground and referee Mark Clattenburg had no hesitation in pointing to the spot. Lampard stepped up and drilled the ball low and hard under Friedel.

To their credit Blackburn replied almost immediately. A cross-field ball by Brett Emerton to the back post saw Benni McCarthy escape his marker and fire in a low shot which saw Cech produce a superb reaction save. The goalkeeper?s value could not have been made any more clearer.

Drogba then replaced Kalou.

Blackburn though continued to push for an equaliser but fortunately for Chelsea some of their players, none more so that Pedersen were badly off form. Lucas Neill however had Chelsea hearts in mouths after he fired narrowly wide from 20 yards.

Ricardo Carvalho was lucky not to give away a penalty after some shirt tugging on Jason Roberts in the box.

However with ten minutes left, Chelsea finally put the game to rest. Swift one-touch football resulted in Drogba racing clear with Ooijer hot on his heels but the big Ivorian striker muscled him out of the equation and battered a right-footed shot into the roof of the net. It was a brilliant goal.

All in all a great result for Chelsea and looking back on what we achieved against the teams we have already played from last year we are actually three points better off this time around. We did lose to both Middlesborough (Away) and Blackburn (Away) but managed to beat Manchester City (Home).

Next up for Jose Mourinho?s men after the International break is a home match against Charlton. Last season Charlton were the only team to take any points off us at Stamford Bridge, a 1-1 draw back in January.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 29th, 2006 at 10:41 am and is filed under Chelsea, Football News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.