Our post-match report was headlined "Yet another Drogs bust" - by no means our worst pun of 2006 (we contemplated "Martins wields Chelsea Dagger", had our number 9 got the winner....)

However when the dust had settled on a second defeat to them in eight days, the winning goal proved to be only one part of the story of a night which posed as many questions as it answered.  

Popular consensus had this as another noble defeat, when the superior SW6 Galacticos ultimately fashioned a winner against the plucky underdogs.

And while that's true to a point we can't help but feel that it was at least partly self-induced.

Nobody expected us to get anything from the Stamford Bridge trip, but our resilience stifled an underachieving home side until the closing stages when a lucky break won them the game.

Fast forward a week and in truth the same thing happened again.

As we had in the away game, we were denied a first half lead by the woodwork. And with Chelsea giving the ball away and generally looking ill at ease, they threatened to buckle towards the end of the first half.  

Unfortunately we weren't playing nearest the bull so we got nothing for the Martins shot - save for an array of camera angles. There was also a bewildering animation on ITV that looked little different from the newspaper one of Jimmy Richardson & Jack Allen in the 1932 "over the line" final. Bizarre.

Drawing but still warmly applauded off at half time (the boos this time reserved for the opposition), that was as good as it got for us, as what cards Roeder had to play remained off the table - or warming up interminably on the sidelines to be more accurate. 

Alongside them on what will always be the cinder track to us were the "stellar" bench (according to one breathless commentator) of Chelsea, with messrs Ballack and Drogba lurking and Lampard already stripped and on the field.

Our best chance of winning this tie was before their big players came on and having made it to half time without scoring, we clearly needed a plan B.
 
With Solano anchored at right back, Milner having his most ineffective game for a while on the left, Dyer seldom hitting his stride down the right and Emre giving little as a makeshift forward, it was all up to Martins to seemingly create and convert. That's a tad unfair.

In an echo of our last two FA Cup finals, we seemed unable or unwilling to change things at all - although we can't believe that our shootout success in the last round convinced Roeder that we could hold out and go through by outshooting the Blues from 12 yards.... 

By contrast there seemed little doubt that the visitors would bring on Drogba if the stalemate persisted. 

He duly appeared, netted - and then we produced Sibierski for a whole four minutes (plus injury time). A decision that raises question marks in our mind as to how seriously we were really trying to win this game.

The Frenchman may have been carrying an injury, having received hefty whacks in his last three outings, but as well as his presence there were surely some other options left open to us? Whatever happened to the striker Kieron guff that the local rag trotted out not long ago?  

A hectic league programme over the festive season will doubtless place further burdens on us and under those circumstances it's perhaps inevitable that we didn't throw caution to the wind - bloody annoying though....

It was also a blessing that we avoided the added burden of extra time - something that our next league opponents Spurs were saddled with in their tie.

Overall though this was a performance that was good as far as it went, but left one wanting more - and being left to rue the lack of striking choices that made this even more of an uphill battle than would normally be expected.

As we head towards 2007 and the opening of that window, it's clear that we need to bolster our defence - many more injuries and we'll have to start calling youth team games off. 

But with the imminent departure of bit-part duo Rossi and Luque, it's equally evident that hanging on for Shola and Owen to come back is just not a viable policy. Hoping that Martins and Sibierski can see us through is a gamble that recent history shows cannot be taken.

PS: We never wanted to go to Cardiff in February anyway...now Glasgow in May, that's quite a different matter...      

Biffa