City 0 Chelsea 1.

It looked good at one point like we may keep hold of our unbeaten record against Chelsea in the Mourinho era but a goal just over ten minutes from time from the in form Joe Cole put paid to our hopes of taking (at least) a point from the game.
Cole and Dunne returned to the line-up, with Cole featuring in a three-man attack with Sibierski retaining his place, and Sun-Jihai moving into centre of midfield where he has looked impressive on his rare outings alongside Barton.
For Chelsea, Frank Lampard missed his first game in a hundred and odd games for Chelsea, but Shaun Wright-Phillips failed to even make the bench on his return to City despite Mourinho's promise that the festive period would see him feature in the side.
It wasn't expected that we would take anything from the game but ultimately I guess it is frustrating that we didn't come away with a point from a game in which Pearce was pleased with performance and response from the side following the disappointment of the trip to Wigan.
It's typical though that Chelsea are able to grind out 1-0 victories such as this and it is rare that style triumphs over graft for the Champions, but if you can win 17 out of the 19 games at the half-way stage then you must be doing something right and it is looking increasingly likely that they will repeat as Champions well before the end of the season.
Next up for us is a NYE trip upto Middlesbrough before entertaining Spurs a couple of days later when we need to take the level of performance against Chelsea into those games when the reward will hopefully be more profitable than what we took from last nights game.

Match reports:

Fox Sports
Official Chelsea site
The Times
Manchester Online