The home side started the game with great purpose and intent, buoyed by the constant din of the drums and chanting from the stands, and they almost took the lead inside of the first 5-6 minutes, with Ademola Looman especially looking dangerous.<\/p>\n
We survived that initial salvo and the following 10-15 minutes as well \u2014 Acheampong putting in a couple crucial blocks and tackles along the way \u2014 and would take the lead halfway through the period with our first meaningful attack: Reece James (just inside by a toe) picking out Jo\u00e3o Pedro in the middle and JP finishing with a toepoke between the goalkeeper\u2019s legs.<\/p>\n
Chelsea improved as the half wore on, and Neto almost had a tap-in just before the break, but we\u2019d take just the one-goal lead into the second half.<\/p>\n
The two sides traded chances after the restart: James firing wide with the goal at his mercy; Lookman scoring from a very obvious offside position at the other. Unfortunately, Scamacca was not in an offside position just a few minutes later as he nodded in Atalanta\u2019s equalizer. Somehow we lost track of the only center forward in the box.<\/p>\n
Atalanta threatened a quick second but we survived and looked to settle back in as the game calmed down. Unfortunately, we\u2019d settle right back into losing, conceding the winner in the 83rd minute after just letting De Ketelaere run with the ball into the box and power a shot on target. S\u00e1nchez probably had it covered, but the deflection of a dangled leg made the save nigh on impossible.<\/p>\n
Chelsea\u2019s response to going behind was as tame as most of our efforts had been all night. JP had a sniff at the last second, but hit the goalkeeper from point blank range.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The home side started the game with great purpose and intent, buoyed by the constant din of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":338271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,188168,596,85],"class_list":["post-338270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chelsea-fc-champions-league","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=338270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/338270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/338271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=338270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=338270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=338270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}