Ivanovic Gifts Swansea

Swansea City will take a 2-0 lead back to the Liberty after beating Chelsea in the first leg at Stamford Bridge. Branislav Ivanovic will be wishing to play that game again as he was at fault for both of the Swansea away goals.

It initially started much better for Chelsea. They were very dominant in the opening and for most of the first half. But they failed to take advantage of their numerous corners and put the ball past Gerhard Tremmel. Then Chelsea were hit with the sucker punch; Ross Turnbull's pass played Ivanovic into trouble, the Serbian then failed to deal with it and was dispossessed by Jonathan De Guzman. De Guzman would then play Michu through for the Spaniard to smash his 16th goal of the season past Turnbull, six minutes before half-time.

Tremmel's best save of the first half came just before the whistle when Ivanovic tried to atone for his error with a powerful curling shot. But the Tremmel was able to turn it around the post and keep Swansea's lead at half-time.

Chelsea gained even more possession in the second half, but they still couldn't find a breakthrough. David Luiz came the closest with another fierce shot from point blank range. But it was hit towards Tremmel's side and the keeper managed to somehow hold onto the ball. Substitute Demba Ba also came pretty close, but his header was again at the right height for Tremmel to hold.

Ba then thought he should have had a penalty at the beginning of injury time. The ball was played in and it was a race between the striker and Tremmel. Ba got to it first as Tremmel then tried to dive out of Ba's way. If there was any contact is was minimal and Ba actually got booked for diving. The ball went straight up the other end and a blind pass from Ivanovic left substitute Danny Graham one-on-one with Turnbull. The striker went around the keeper before rolling it home, despite David Luiz's best efforts to recover, making it 2-0 with yet another sucker punch.

Chelsea did think that they had put themselves back into it for the second leg when Ba had the ball in the net. But the linesman flagged the striker offside, which he was by centimetres. Chelsea aren't completely out of it by any means, but it is a huge task to recover from a two goal deficit at the Liberty.