Chelsea started the new season with a 3-2 victory over promoted side Birmingham with new signings Claudio Pizarro and Florent Malouda among the scorers. 

Although the score points to an evenly poised game, Chelsea actually dominated their first home match at Stamford Bridge, setting a new English record of 64 unbeaten home games and counting.

Ex-Bayern and Peruvian striker, Pizarro, filling in for the injured Drogba and Shevchenko, brought the title contenders level only minutes after Birmingham went ahead through Mikael Forssell’s flick header (against the run of play) early in the match.

It was the other new boy, ex-Lyon and French winger Malouda who added to his Charity Shield goal and put Chelsea in the lead before Birmingham scored an incredible leveler through Olivier Kopa before half-time.

Chelsea concluded the affair with an Essien winner, grabbing all 3 points to kick off the season. The result was good for both teams as it showed once again that Chelsea have the quality and the mental character to win and score when coming from behind.

For Birmingham (relegated from the EPL 2 seasons ago), it showed that this time around Steve Bruce’s men will have a better time finding the back of the net, though he may need to think twice about his keeper selection as Colin Doyle was suspect in 2 of the 3 goals.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Soccer World, England, EPL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.