Tigers tamed by Mourinho’s Blues
Written By: Robert Halter
It was a special day at Chelsea as the ‘special one’ Jose Mourniho began his first competitive match back at the Blues with the Tigers marking their return to the top flight with Hull City finishing second in last season’s Championship promotion. In the fourth minute, Oscar played in Eden Hazard but the Tigers shot stopper Allan McGregor blocked the way but a minute later as McGregor man handled Fernando Torres in the area, referee Jonathan Moss awarded the Blues a spot kick but McGregor made amends by diving at full stretch to his right to keep out Frank Lampard’s penalty strike. But Chelase did unlock the Hull City door on thirteen minutes when Hazard started the move and Kevin De Bruyne slipped the pass through to Oscar, who tucked the ball past McGregor. De Bruyne was again instrumental in the build up play two minutes later as he despatched the ball over to Lampard, whose fierce dipping shot was expertly turned over by McGregor. The Blues forged further ahead on twenty five minutes, when James Chester was penalised for challenging Torres and from long range, Lampard’s direct free kick bent over the Hull wall and rammed into the net. In first half stoppage time, McGregor was forced to clear away a well timed connection by Lampard, who had been played through by Torres but just before the break the Blues went even closer to scoring as Lampard whipped in a corner and Branislav Ivanovic’s header was parried away from under his crossbar by McGregor as goal line technology ruled that the ball had not crossed the line. On just under the hour mark the Tigers brought on Tom Huddlestone for David Meyler and Jake Livermore for Danny Graham. Hull’s captain, Robert Koren tried his luck at range on sixty two minutes but it was no trouble for Petr Cech. De Bruyne made way for Andre Schurrle, for his home debut with twenty five minutes of normal time remaining. On seventy three minutes, the Tigers threatend again as Cech sprung into action to clutch hold of a Curtis Davies header. Just after Romelu Lukaku replaced Torres, the game should have been signed, sealed and delivered by Schurrle but his miss guided shot went over, after Ramires had floated over a ball from inside the centre circle. Hull made a final switch of Sone Aluko for George Boyd, who instantly gave away a free kick after appending Ashley Cole but this time Lampard thrashed his shot past the top right corner. Another home debutant Marco van Ginkel replaced Oscar towards the end as Mourinho’s reign got off to a winning start.