Fernando Torres celebrates his goal at Aston Villa (PremierLeague.com)
The wait is over, Chelsea fans, it's happened. Fernando Torres got a league goal against Aston Villa. It's great to see. The Spaniard has looked to be resurrecting his form somewhat of late, and it was nice to see it payoff with the ball in the back of the net. It didn't really tell the story of the match though.
Villa came into the match just riddled with injuries. They were fielding their youngest Premier League side in 4 years. It looked like Chelsea was going to be in a good position to pick up some valuable points on the road, and the early minutes bore that theory out. The Blues stroked the ball around like a training exercise and they zeroed in on the Villa goal.
Torres got his first look in the 6th minute after a gorgeous through ball from David Luiz. Unfortunately some good goal keeping from Shay Given snuffed out his chance to keep it level. In the 9th minute, Torres again let loose right in front of goal. Given again blocked his shot, but it fell right to Daniel Sturridge, who banged the ball into the net from about 5 yards out to give Chelsea the 0-1 lead.
After that Chelsea went on cruise control for much of the rest of the half. Villa didn't put up any fight on offense, and barely pressed the Blues when they were on the ball. However, the longer the score stayed at 0-1, the more Villa figured out that Chelsea wasn't going to destroy them. They came up with a couple of decent chances late in the half, but couldn't find the net, and the half ended at 0-1.
Chelsea looked like they put the final stamp on the match early in the 2nd half. In the 51st minute they took advantage of a corner kick, which has been one of Villa's weaknesses all year. Juan Mata sent in the corner and Branislav Ivanovic picked out the ball and smacked it into the top of the net to make it 0-2 to Chelsea.
Then the Blues went on cruise control again, and it cost them.
Coming into the last 15 minutes of the match, it looked like Villa was just toast, but then they woke up. In the 77th minute American Eric Lichaj put a long throw into the area, and James Collins came in, totally unmarked, and headed past Petr Cech to make it 1-2. Then just three minutes later, Lichaj himself equalized at 2-2 when he knocked in a cross from Marc Albrighton. Chelsea was stunned.
They woke up and kicked it into another gear though. In fact, the tie lasted just 3 minutes, until the next Chelsea corner. In the 83rd, Torres flicked on the corner to Ivanovic, who headed it in for his second goal of the day to make it 2-3. Finally the Blues sealed it in the second minute of stoppage as Sturridge slipped a ball to Torres, who clinically knocked it past Given to hand the Blues the 2-4 win.
In the end, it was a lot harder than it should have been for Chelsea, and you have to give the young Aston Villa side a lot of credit for fighting back. The Blues were just too much when they had their heads in the game. Hopefully Torres has now turned the corner. We shall see.
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