The goalkeeping situation at Chelsea warrants further scrutiny after a string of mistakes by Hilario against Frankfurst, followed a weak display by Turnbull against Ajax.
With many of the bigger name players returning from the World Cup, it was nice to see such luminary players as Lampard, Terry, Anelka and Malouda return to the starting line-up. Many players were still clearly rusty, but it was Hilario who took centre stage in this game, for all the wrong reasons.
The match started well enough with early chances for Kalou and Malouda, and new signing Yossi Benayoun getting involved with the play whenever he could, and Bruma looking assured at the back.
However in the 24th minute it all went wrong, a breakdown in communication between Hilario and JT in the first half, then opting to dribble with the ball when he should have cleared it, led to Chelsea being 1-0 down at half time as Amanatidis took advantage to set up Ochs who scored with relative ease.
Half time saw a raft of Chelsea changes, with Carvalho, Essien, Ivanovic, Lampard and younger players, Mancienne, Borini, Van Aanholt and Matic joining them, and Chelsea again started brightly with Mancienne and Van Aanholt looking good in the full back positions.
It was a break by Van Aanholt, cutting inside and driving at the penalty area that set up Lampard, who latched onto a through ball to poke it past the keeper, then follow it up to knock it home. The first Lampard goal of the season, and took him less than 20 minutes of football.
Frankfurt then changed their own team around with a couple of substitutions, and as the half wore on they had the lions share of the chances. Essien again looked good in the middle, playing some lovely cross field passes, Sinclair showed flashes of pace and Van Aanholt continued to impress.
However in the 82nd minute, some poor defending by Matic in the area saw use conceded a penalty from which Alintop converted for Frankfurt, to make the score 2-1. Moments later, Hilario almost made an identical error to the one in the first half, however this time Carvalho was able to get a touch on the shot to prevent a goal.
The final moments of the match saw more football go Frankfurts way, with only sporadic play by Chelsea producing anything of note. An attack late on saw a Van Aanholt shot just flash past the post, but with all said and done, the result was a fair one.
We shouldn’t take this defeat to badly, there were lots of rusty legs out there and we are still missing Cech and Drogba, there has already been encouraging signs from players both young and old on this tour, and we should see more of a competitive performance mid-week against Hamburg.
Chelsea (4-3-3): Hilario; Ferreira (Mancienne H-T), Bruma (Carvalho H-T), Terry (Ivanovic H-T), Cole (Van Aanholt); Benayoun (Lampard H-T), Mikel (Essien H-T), Zhirkov (Matic H-T); Kalou (Sinclair 58), Anelka (Borini H-T), Malouda (McEachran 58).
Eintracht Frankfurt (4-4-2: Nikolov (Fahrmann H-T); Ochs, Franz, Kohler, Meier; Amanatidis (Atlintop 59), Gekas (Caio 59), Russ, Jung; Schwegler, Tzavellas.
Attendance: 45,000
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