sunday papers charlton away

sunday times:
Charlton 0 Chelsea 2: Robben fires up ChelseaJoe Lovejoy at The Valley CHARLTON made them work hard for 54 goalless minutes, but Chelsea then scored twice in quick succession to maintain their 100% start to the season and extend their lead at the top of the Premiership to six points. Alan Curbishley's team, assembled at a tiny fraction of the cost of Jose Mourinho's all-stars, were also unbeaten at the kick-off, but they were second best throughout, and can have no complaint with the scoreline, which barely does justice to Chelsea's superiority.
Hernan Crespo and William Gallas both rapped Stephan Andersen's uprights with the goalkeeper beaten, and another goal or two would not have flattered the defending champions unduly. As it was, they were happy to settle for the two scored in the space of five second-half minutes by Crespo, with what we used to call a typically British centre-forward's header, and a delightful curler from the 18-yard line from Arjen Robben.
After that, there was no way back for Charlton — not against a defence that has now gone nearly 10 hours without leaking a Premiership goal. The exact figure is 597 minutes, and for those of statistical bent, Chelsea are now unbeaten in 35 League games. With six clean sheets, they have established a new record start to a season in the top flight.
On Friday, Mourinho had called Charlton a "medium", rather than big club, which some at The Valley had interpreted as an ill-disguised euphemism for ordinary, and he was deemed to have added insult to injury by forecasting that Chelsea would finish 20 to 30 points ahead of them at the end of the season. Nobody was arguing last night.
For his part, Curbishley said Roman Abramovich's financial muscle was bad for English football. Small wonder the conversation between them was brief when Mourinho made a pre-match presentation to his opposite number to mark his 600 League matches in charge at Charlton.
As befits a star-studded line-up threatening to run away with the League again, Chelsea were confident and briskly assertive from the start, and their cohesive authority was such that they had created four decent chances before the game was 20 minutes old.
The best of these saw Crespo, sent through the middle by Michael Essien, run on with pace and purpose, only for his shot, from near the penalty spot, to hit the base of Andersen's left-hand upright. Chelsea were to hit a post again, after 48 minutes, when Frank Lampard's corner from the left reached the far post, where Gallas, at close range, could only bundle the ball against the upright.
Earlier, Lampard's goalbound volley was deflected wide and Crespo's 20-yarder brought a sprawling save from Andersen, who was then happy to parry another strong drive, this time from Robben. Charlton struggled to get out of their own half.
Andersen distinguished himself with a late positional adjustment to save a deflected free kick from Lampard, but the keeper had no chance with the majestic header with which Crespo belatedly brought some sense to the scoreline.
Fifty-four one-sided minutes had elapsed when Radostin Kishishev was hustled out of possession by Essien, whose lofted, angled pass enabled the Argentinian striker, leaping near the penalty spot, to nod the ball powerfully into Andersen's top left corner. Like buses after a long wait, the goals came two together, and Robben soon increased the lead, stroking home a lovely left-footer from the 18-yard line.
Chelsea were home and dry, and would have had a third, from Shaun Wright-Phillips, but for Andersen.
Like so many others, Curbishley was much impressed with Chelsea's all-round strength. "Seeing them at first hand, they're so powerful that they go into games believing that if they score, that's it," he said. "They are so disciplined, powerful and organised that their opponents have got to play as well as they can and then still hope for a bit of luck."
Unsurprisingly, he identified Manchester United and Arsenal as the two teams with the potential to compete. "The trouble is, this season Chelsea seem to have moved on again, and they're saying, 'This is the level we're at, this is what we do, it's up to you to catch up'." Don't hold your breath.
STAR MAN: John Terry (Chelsea) Player ratings. Charlton: Andersen 7, Young 6, Perry 7, Hreidarsson 6, Powell 6 (Spector 70min, 6), Rommedahl 6, Kishishev 6 (Holland 67min, 6), Murphy 7, Hughes 6, Thomas 6 (Ambrose 67min, 6), Bent 6 Chelsea: Cech 7, Ferreira 6, Carvalho 6, Terry 8, Gallas 6, Makelele 7, Duff 6 (Wright-Phillips 63min, 6), Lampard 7, Essien 7, Robben 7 (J Cole 79min, 6), Crespo 7 (Drogba 67min, 6)
Scorers: Chelsea: Crespo 55, Robben 60
Referee: H Webb
Attendance: 27,111
Chelsea set record with 2-0 victory
CHELSEA showed a clean pair of heels to the rest of the Premiership yesterday, establishing a six-point lead and a record start to the season with a 2-0 win at second-place Charlton,writes Jim Munro. The defending champions have won all six of their Premiership games without conceding a goal, those successive clean sheets from the start of the season setting a new mark in English football's top flight. Jose Mourinho's men now have eyes on Tottenham's longest winning sequence from the beginning of a season, 11 games, set when the First Division was the premier competition in 1960-61. Second-half goals from Hernan Crespo and Arjen Robben secured an entertaining victory, after which Mourinho's No 2, Steve Clarke, replied in dour fashion when asked why he thought some critics label the west London club as boring to watch.
"We don't think about it. It doesn't mystify us, we ignore it," said Clarke. "Ask our supporters if they are happy."
He also responded brusquely when it was suggested that Chelsea's highly-paid squad is only motivated by the size of the wage packets. "Money doesn't come into it," he said. "The players are all top professionals who want to win everything."
It was a day on which the stattos will have been sharpening their pencils with delight: Chelsea have now dropped just 12 points from a last possible 105, while midfielder Frank Lampard made his 152nd consecutive League appearance. That set a Premiership record for an outfield player and moved him within seven games of the overall record held by goalkeeper David James, established with Liverpool in the 1990s.
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Crespo leads Blues on march
Amy Lawrence at The Valley Sunday September 18, 2005The Observer
That's entertainment? Chelsea purport not to care but nobody in their right minds wouldn't prefer a touch of class to be added to the perfunctory demand for job done. If the rest of the Premiership consoled themselves that Chelsea have been unappealing in their triumphs thus far this season, the bad news is they won handsomely enough here.Their 100 per cent record goes on - at the expense of Charlton's - and there were positive displays from an attack in which scorers Hernan Crespo and Arjen Robben and creators Damien Duff and Michael Essien looked sharp and inventive for longer periods than they previously managed this campaign.
At the other end, the foundation stones were as unshakeable as ever. Six games without being breached represents the most miserly start to a Premiership campaign.
When will someone dare to have a go at Chelsea? When their closest challengers, who are at home, scarcely dare offer too many men in support of their lone striker it's difficult to see how the veneer of invincibility around their rearguard will be scratched. The in-form Darren Bent didn't have a sniff all afternoon.
It's a state of the football nation that shifting tickets for a duel between the top two, with Charlton relishing their finest start to a season and Chelsea reigning champions, should have proved such hard work. The 'Sold Out' signs only went up two days before the game.
Peter Varney, chief executive at The Valley, outlined strong concerns about 'warning signs' for the Premiership.
Pertinently, with Jose Mourinho's side popping in, Varney added it isn't just about money. 'Fear of failure and negative play must not take over. Football is an entertainment industry,' he said in his programme notes.
That's not, as we know, a philosophy shared by Chelsea's results-obsessed manager but they started adventurously enough here.
But Charlton held their ground, kept their nerve and tried not to get too riled by the maverick wide men, Robben and Duff, who switched and zipped and occasionally went theatrically to ground.
Just as Charlton began to settle, they were oh so close to being unstitched on the counterattack when on 20 minutes Chelsea should have taken the lead.
Radostin Kishishev lost the plot and the ball - not for the first time - inexplicably gifting it to Michael Essien. The Ghana midfielder reacted brilliantly, releasing Crespo in a flash. The Argentina striker bore down on goal and Charlton braced themselves to go behind. To their relief, though, Crespo's drive rebounded off the base of the post. A monumental let off.
Having hung in there, Charlton slowly found the confidence to press on.
They needed a spark to raise the tempo, and it came from Danny Murphy. His determined run to the edge of the penalty area might not have been perfect - he missed the opportunity to provide Bent with some rare service - but it quickened the pulse and got the crowd going. Dennis Rommedahl then took up the baton when he whipped a shot just wide.
Charlton had a feeling familiar to all Premiership teams - the bewilderment that comes with hitting the brick wall that is Chelsea's defence. John Terry excelled himself as usual. It may have been a trick of the eye but it did look suspiciously like he was the only man on the pitch who ever won a header, so persistent was his aerial dominance.
Chelsea came out strong in the second half.
William Gallas scrambled a corner against a post just after the restart, and then, when Chris Powell switched off, Crespo pounced and Andersen kept Charlton in the game.
Parity didn't last long, however. Chelsea disappeared over the horizon with two goals in five minutes.
The breakthrough came when Kishishev lost possession for the third time in a dangerous area and Essien lobbed the ball onto Crespo, whose finish was clinical.
Robben then seized the moment to score with a touch of finesse. Receiving the ball on the edge of the box from Duff, he jinked into enough space to find room to bend the ball into the far corner. A picture book strike from the Dutchman.
'That's why we're champions,' sang the visiting Chelsea supporters. Well, that and - even more crucially - the small matter of a defence which seldom concedes a chance, never mind a goal.
MAN OF THE MATCH
Hernan Crespo A classier customer than the powerhouse with whom he rotates, Didier Drogba, Crespo led Chelsea's line with authority, intelligence and coolness. Having hit a post early on when he should have scored, his temperament was undamaged. The killer instinct lurks constantly and he took his goal ruthlessly.
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Reality bites for Charlton as Chelsea set record paceBy Roy Collins at The Valley (Filed: 18/09/2005)
In pics: Premiership action
Charlton (0) 0 Chelsea (0) 2
Champions Chelsea again embossed a facile Premiership victory with an entry into the record books, which is becoming such a familiar occurrence that they might soon need to recruit BBC Test Match Special cricket statistician Bill Frindall to log them all. The Beeb would surely agree to release him for, say, £24 million, the going rate for Chelsea imports, and call it £60,000-a-week for Frindall.
Flying high: Chelsea's Arjen Robben celebrates his winner Chelsea, while scarcely breaking sweat and not yet into their full stride, are simply too good for 99 per cent of their rivals, which looks like making it not just a long season for those with increasingly diminished ambitions of seizing their title but a tedious one for everyone else.
In any other season, an encounter between the only two Premiership clubs entering the second month of the season guarding 100 per cent records would have been a mouth-watering prospect. But if the end-of-season table never lies, the early-season ones are full of half truths and white lies and the Chelsea manager, Jose Mourinho, was only being honest, if untactful, when pointing out beforehand that second-placed Charlton would finish 30-odd points behind his team.
If the match crackled with expectation on paper, there was a depressing inevitability about it in reality. As valiantly as Charlton toiled for an hour, as willingly and unselfishly as they ran, one was always left wondering just when one of Chelsea's multi-million-pound imports, Hernan Crespo, Claude Makelele or Michael Essien, would produce that bit of magic.
Sharing that thought were the players and the manager of Charlton, Alan Curbishley, all of whom would have been invited to partake in a lap of honour had they managed to hold Chelsea to a goalless draw. The chances of that happening were scuppered in five second-half minutes when Chelsea calmly put this match to bed for their sixth successive win. First, Essien capitalised on the indecisiveness of Radostin Kishishev to deliver a cross that Crespo headed in, then Arjen Robben angled a peach of a shot into the top corner on the hour.
In the course of victory, Chelsea equalled the Premiership record of six straight wins at the start of a season, achieved by Newcastle United in 1994-95, although Mourinho's men have done it without conceding a goal - a new record. They can now set their sights on surpassing the best top-flight start in English football history, 11 wins by Tottenham Hotspur in the 1960-61 season. Chelsea are also only 14 games from equalling Arsenal's record of 49 Premiership games unbeaten; given the belief and arrogance in their camp, they will doubtless also fancy themselves not just to equal Arsenal's feat of going though the whole season unbeaten but doing so without conceding.
Mourinho annoyed some Charlton fans before kick-off by referring to their side as a "medium club", the verbal equivalent of patting a willing but inferior junior on the head. In truth, he was elevating the station of a club who have been too modest about their achievements and too restricted in their ambitions.
In their previous five seasons in the Premiership, they have set their sights only on avoiding relegation and have consistently switched off once that has been comfortably achieved. So it is as well that they are now daring to talk about a top-six finish since, after their flying start to the season, they could have expected to be in holiday mode by Boxing Day.
Charlton certainly did not need to drain the hop fields of Kent or bus in fans from adjoining London boroughs to fill the Valley for this one, their perfect start of four wins encouraging a full house of 27,111 to believe that they could give the champions a game, if not a bloody nose.
Curbishley said that his players have long since lost the fear factor when having the Premiership aristocracy around for tea, but there was a feeling that they were overdoing the bowing and scraping when allowing Chelsea to dominate with long periods of casual possession early on, one 20-odd touch passing movement almost ending with a sting in the tail when Frank Lampard volleyed wide.
Darren Bent and Jerome Thomas combined to give goakeeper Petr Cech an anxious moment, but when Essien muscled Kishishev off the ball and hurried it forward to Crespo, only the post saved Chalrton.
There is indeed a "medium" club feel to Charlton, particularly when they run out not to some ear-splitting rock number but to the gentle strains of When the Red, Red Robin goes bob, bob bobbing … though some of us find that more appealing than the brash, new money vulgarity of Roman Abramovich's Chelsea.
But the Blues are not to be denied at the moment, beginning the season at an even more cracking pace than last time. Already, their so-called rivals are relying on them suffering the mythical blip.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Independent:
Chelsea: League of their own
Curbishley's concerns over the great divide are brought home as Chelsea untouchables stretch their lead to six points By Mark Burton
All over before the Autumnal Equinox? Surely not... but it would be more promising for those intent on stopping Chelsea from retaining their title if someone could at least score against them. Charlton Athletic tried and failed yesterday, losing 2-0 at home to goals by Hernan Crespo and Arjen Robben as Chelsea brushed aside their nearest rivals to move six points clear at the top.
If it was Robben who offered a glimspe of hope to the chasing pack by becoming, along with Ricardo Carvalho and now Joe Cole, one of the Stamford Bridge dissidents who dared to question Jose Mourinho's management of his hugely talented squad, then it was the Dutchman yesterday who slammed the door on Charlton's hopes of slowing Chelsea's progress. Damien Duff - Cole's chief rival for a role on the left of midfield - set up Robben and he deftly made it 2-0 with a curling shot that virtually assured that Chelsea would finish the day with six victories out of six.
Charlton and their manager, Alan Curbishley, at least had some satisfaction in holding the champions in the first half. They finally surrendered 11 minutes after the interval when Radostin Kishishev lost the ball and Michael Essien chipped a pass that Crespo headed home.
The goal - and the match - underlined Curbishley's fears that the Premiership will become uncompetitive if Chelsea continue to move for the best players available, saying that the Stamford Bridge club's near- successful attempt to lure Steven Gerrard away from Liverpool, the newly-crowned European champions, was breathtaking. Essien was signed late this summer for £24.4m while Crespo was acquired in August 2003 for £16.8m, loaned out to Milan last season as surplus to requirements, but brought back this summer. After the second goal went in, Mourinho brought on £45m-worth of substitutes in Didier Drogba and Shaun Wright-Phillips.
Steve Clarke, Mourinho's assistant, made it all sound so matter of fact. "There's no comfortable victories in the Premier League," he said. "The first half was an even game. At half-time we had a little word with the lads and asked them to step up a gear - and I think it showed in the second half that we were on top. When you know you're in the ascendancy, you have to kill the game at that moment - and we did that."
Curbishley was resigned to the outcome, albeit from an opposite standpoint. "We'll take it on the chin," he said. "They've got so many match-winners and look how hard they work. It's a massive squad and the only problem is fitting them all on the bus."
Charlton Athletic 0 Chelsea 2 Valley of tears over Chelsea class gap By Steve Tongue at The Valley
Last year it was four-nil and could have been six, so you might say that the gap is closing between these sides. Not fast enough, however, to make this any sort of contest once Chelsea opened up in the second half, or to encourage any other club in the land with more genuine championship aspirations than Charlton, who had begun the season with four wins out of four. They finished well beaten, as their manager, Alan Curbishley, was the first to acknowledge.
"Chelsea are so disciplined, powerful and organised that they go into games believing if they score, that's probably it," he said, which was pretty much how things turned out. "They've got so many match-winners and look how hard they work. It's a massive squad and the only problem is fitting them all on the bus and keeping them all happy."
Joe Cole, a substitute again, is the latest dissident to make his unhappiness known, albeit through "a source close to the player". The solution for another Chelsea midfielder, Russia's captain Alexei Smertin, was to ask to be loaned out and Charlton have benefited hugely from his work alongside Danny Murphy in midfield. But under Premiership rules he could not play yesterday and was predictably missed.
Darren Bent, winning praise and prizes in equal measure after scoring in each of the opening four matches, was, on his own admission, up against a different class of defender here; Ricardo Carvalho gave him a good buffeting from behind, and John Terry was a colossus. Only Michael Essien, recruited for a mere £26m, challenged his captain as the afternoon's outstanding figure. "He will get better and better," said Chelsea's coach, Steve Clarke, of the Ghanaian, which is a frightening prospect.
When were the odds against a team lying second in the table ever as long as 6-1 to win a home game? That fact alone illustrated what Charlton and the other middle-ranking wannabes are up against in competing directly against the squad Roman Abram-ovich has bankrolled and the team Jose Mourinho has fashioned.
In the opening period of the game, Mourinho sat on an advertising hoarding admiring the view as his side pressed forward, forcing the first chance when Damien Duff passed Chris Powell with ominous ease and crossed for Frank Lampard to volley wide. Radostin Kishishev twice lost possession and deserved to be punished by Hernan Crespo, who had his first effort saved by Stephan Andersen and drove the second against a post.
Arjen Robben also had a fierce shot parried, but after 20 minutes Charlton settled and by half-time had earned an ovation from the largest Valley crowd since 1977. Jerome Thomas was a confident trickster down the left and Murphy again the creative force, though his set-pieces let him down. The home side's best moments were when Thomas hit the side-netting and then sent Rommedahl through to do the same.
Mourinho, having asked his team to put more pressure on Charlton higher up the pitch, resumed his seat on the hoardings at the start of the second half and was twice close to being brought to his feet. Lampard floated one free-kick to the far post, where William Gallas jabbed it on to a post; Robben touched another one to the England midfielder, whose low shot was deflected off a defender, forcing Andersen into a smart stop. Bent's drive over the bar provided only brief respite and in the 56th minute, Kishishev finally paid the penalty for losing the ball. Essien gratefully received it and, after steadying himself, picked out Crespo for a chip that the striker headed powerfully at goal, Andersen getting a hand to the ball without keeping it out.
Four minutes later Duff did well to hold off Powell in the penalty area and set up Robben for a deft curler into the top corner of the net. To emphasise the unfairness of it all, the champions then brought on £45m worth of substitutes in Didier Drogba and Shaun Wright-Phillips, who forced a good save from Andersen within a couple of minutes of arriving, following a classic Chelsea break out of defence.
Cole had to wait until the last 12 minutes for an appearance, which will hardly be enough to satisfy him. Curbishley tried to stem the tide by introducing Matt Holland, Darren Ambrose and the full-back Jonathan Spector, on loan from Manchester United (who must, with all their injuries, now wish they had kept him). Perry, defying his lack of inches, was closest to getting Charlton back into the game as he rose to head one of Murphy's better corners over the bar.
So, by the final whistle, Chelsea had played for 10 hours without conceding so much as a goal as well as 35 Premiership games without defeat; 15 more and they will beat the Arsenal record which many felt would never be challenged. But that, of course, was B J - before Jose.
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