by FINAL SCORE:
20:45 FT ‘ Chelsea 4 : 2 Reading
LONDON (Sporting Alert) — Chelsea recovered from a slight first half hiccup to beat newly promoted Reading 4-2 in the Barclays Premier League on Wednesday night.
The hosts took the lead in the 17th minute when England international Frank Lampard converted a penalty kick.
But Reading hit back with two goals – first from Pavel Pogrebnyak in the 24th minute and Danny Guthrie four minutes later to take a first half 2-1 lead.
Chelsea found it scoring boots in the second half, with Gary Cahill and Fernando Torres, who was very fortunate to not have been called for offside on his strike – netting to give the Blues a 3-2 lead.
“He (Torres) was offside and it was not a good night for him (the assistant),” a gutted Reading boss Brian McDermott said.
“It’s not been a good night for me, either.”
McDermott added: “I just said to him he’d got it wrong.
“My gut feeling was that it was offside, and it was clearly offside. Unfortunate for him.
“He said he’d have a look at it. He can have a look at it. That’s life.
“People makes mistakes, and he’s made a mistake tonight.
“It’s just a shame it was for such a crucial goal because we would definitely have got a point.
“I’m really disappointed for the players. We didn’t deserve to lose the game. I thought we were going to win it when we got to 70-odd minutes.”
Chelsea boss Di Matteo admitted that he hadn’t seen the replay of the goal by Torres as yet.
“I looked at the linesman straight away and he gave it straight away, so I can’t comment,” said Di Matteo.
Branislav Ivanovic added another close to the end of the game to make sure that Roberto Di Matteo side stayed perfect from its two opening games of the season.
“We are very pleased with six points after two games,” the Italian said.
“I was very happy with the team performance for long periods of the game.
“We lost a bit our composure after Reading scored the equaliser and second goal, but we’d started off very well, with some great football, and finished off very strongly.”
Chelsea v Reading Teams
Reading: Federici, Gunter, Pearce, Leigertwood, Harte, Karacan, McAnuff, Guthrie, Gorkss, Pogrebnyak, McCleary. Subs: Tabb, Mariappa, Robson-Kanu, Hunt, McCarthy, Cummings, Le Fondre.
Teams – Chelsea: Cech, Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Cole, Ramires, Lampard, Mata, Mikel, Hazard, Torres. Subs: Turnbull, Bertrand, Essien, Romeu, Meireles, Oscar, Sturridge.
