Blackburn Rovers 1-1 Chelsea: Diouf equaliser hampers Blues' title challenge

Blackburn Rovers put a huge dent into Chelsea’s Premier League title aspirations and helped Manchester United open up a four-point lead over the London side with a well deserved draw at Ewood Park.

The visitors started the better early on, when they exposed Blackburn’s left hand side, with both Florent Malouda and Nicolas Anelka exploiting the opportunities that came as a result to test the Blackburn goal.

The pressure duly paid off when, with only six minutes on the clock, Anelka raced down the right wing and expertly found Drogba, who scored easily to give Carlo Ancelotti’s side an early lead.

From then on Chelsea continued to run the rule over the home side and left Jason Brown, in the Rovers goal, scrambling on several occasions.

Blackburn never looked like getting back on level terms in the first half, as they offered Nikola Kalinic, on his own up front, no kind of support as both Alex and John Terry at the back for Chelsea were left to deal with long balls coming from the home side.

The only glimmer of light for Sam Allardyce in the first half was both Phil Jones and David Dunn, who looked to get in the faces of the Chelsea side. But they could not get near enough to the penalty area to be able to test Ross Turnbull in the visitor’s goal.

Chelsea continued to knock at the door of Brown’s goal and they were unlucky with just five minutes left on the first half,  when Malouda sprinted forward, leaving a couple of defenders in his wake before unleashing a strike which the 'keeper managed to palm away from his goal to prevent his side from going two goals behind.

Ancelotti suffered an injury blow at the end of the half when Branislav Ivanovic pulled up injured and had to be replaced by Yury Zhirkov which meant that Chelsea had to make a tactical change in order to accommodate the introduction of the Russian.


Blackburn started much more brightly in the second half. The key component to that change was the delivery from Morten Gamst Pedersen, which had Turnbull in somewhat of a panic.

Inbetween the home side’s pressure, Frank Lampard managed to bomb forward and tested Brown with a shot from just outside the box, which failed to double Chelsea's lead. 

Centre-half Christopher Samba was lucky not to see red just before the hour mark as he seemed to bring Anelka to the ground while the Frenchman was racing towards the Blackburn goal.

The home side continued to press though, with more players going forward than in the previous half. Both Pedersen and substitute Jason Roberts looked to get at the Chelsea back four but were unsuccessful.

But Blackburn’s luck was in with 20 minutes left in the game, when a superb cross from former Real Madrid defender Michel Salgado was powerfully headed pass Turnbull and into the Chelsea net by El-Hadji Diouf.

That goal spurred Chelsea back into action and they ventured forward as Ancelotti’s side chased the winner that would keep them in the title hunt. And with that, the Italian decided to introduce Deco in order to give his team the creative spark he felt had lacked in the side for the first 70 minutes.

Chelsea continued to show their dominance, but for the most part found both Samba and Jones rocks at the back and they protected Brown in the Blackburn goal to the best of their abilities.

Controversy reigned late into injury time, as Lampard charged into the box and looked to have been brought down by Pedersen, but to the anger of the Chelsea fans behind the goal, referee Steve Bennett refused to award a spot-kick.

The play of the two centre halves for Blackburn, coupled with resilient defending from the rest of the outfield players saw the home side hold out and get a draw, which puts Allardyce’s side onto the edge of the top ten of the Premier League.

Chelsea, meanwhile, slip to third in the table, behind Arsenal and current leaders Manchester United