Chelsea Supporters Club South Africa

Chelsea suffered a second successive friendly defeat on Sunday, after a late penalty gave our German hosts a narrow victory.

On the balance of play it was perhaps a fair result, though it should be noted that Eintracht Frankfurt are a week ahead of the Blues in their preparations, with the Bundesliga kicking off next weekend.

It was individual slips that cost us, first Hilario made a hash of his clearance and then a shirt pull by Branislav Ivanovic handed our hosts a penalty, either side of substitute Frank Lampard’s equaliser.

Results however are not the key factor in these games, and Carlo Ancelotti will have been pleased to see his World Cup players, and a couple of injury victims gaining some minutes on the pitch.

For our third pre-season fixture, the manager was boosted by the presence nine returning World Cup internationals, and the Italian opted to start with six of them.

Also available for the first time was Yossi Benayoun, whose groin injury had eased to allow him a debut, and Yury Zhirkov, who had recovered from his hamstring complaint for a first run out of 2010/11.