Diego Costa tries to light up Chelsea with his dark arts against Liverpool | Barney Ronay

The Spain forward roused José Mourinho’s men but it was not pretty – just downright ornery and ragged as they progressed to the Capital One Cup final

• Match report: Chelsea 1-0 Liverpool (agg: 2-1)

• Five talking points

Oh, Diego. Whatever are we going to do with you? This Capital One Cup semi-final second leg always seemed likely to provide an epic instalment in the season’s third-string competition – and so it did on a dirty, messy, thrilling night at Stamford Bridge. We came expecting expansive football from two teams overloaded with nimble attacking-midfielders. What we got, in the first hour at least, was a peculiar twin-track thing.

On the one hand here was a match that resembled at times a drunken scuffle, not least in a poisonous first half centred on Diego Costa, a player who seems to run on pure, cold-blooded footballing rage. Meanwhile, below the headline drama of stamps and grapples there was a parallel match taking place in which Philippe Coutinho was the leading man early on in a series of high-velocity Liverpool attacks aimed at the tender rump of Chelsea’s defence. And from which Costa and Eden Hazard ultimately emerged as the dominant figures as Chelsea won 1-0 to reach their first Wembley final since José Mourinho’s return.

Continue reading...



via Chelsea | The Guardian http://ift.tt/1CeBArr