FOR a football traveller as worldly as Luiz Felipe Scolari, the romance of the FA Cup is something of a mystery. However, the expression Chelsea’s manager wore after Southend United first snatched a draw with what seemed a last-gasp header and then preserved it with a goalkeeping save worthy of eulogies around the Kursaal and Cockle Sheds for years to come was that of a man being subjected to painful education.

Scolari was aware, just like everybody else at Stamford Bridge. that Chelsea should have been safely ensconced in the fourth round long before the determination of Peter Clarke earned a replay at Roots Hall on January 14. He is perplexed that his side fell to a 90th-minute equaliser that stemmed from a high ball into the box and resulted from sub-standard defending for the second time in a week. He is puzzled by the fact that his team’s ratio of chances created to goals converted is becoming wider by the month.

Whereas his predecessors Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant managed to make Stamford Bridge something of a blue-coated fortress, the opposition now arrive aware that pressures of expectation seem to transmit their way on to the pitch and into Chelsea’s team.

“It would be fair to say their home form has become a little patchy,” said Southend’s hero Clarke. “I suppose they were thinking this might have been a good opportunity to turn it around. They had plenty of the ball and loads of chances. We just wanted to frustrate them for as long as possible.”

Now Scolari and his men must brave the most inhospitable evening that the Essex Riviera can muster to ensure they equal a club record by surviving the third round for an 11th successive year.

Southend were hardly one of the most threatening outfits from the lower divisions. Clarke, fittingly celebrating his 27th birthday, might have grazed the top of the crossbar seven minutes before scoring, but otherwise Carlo Cudicini in Chelsea’s goal had an afternoon as bereft of incident as any he had experienced sitting on the substitutes’ bench as reserve to Petr Cech.

Steve Tilson’s team had laboured through eight hours and 25 minutes of football on their travels since scoring their last away goal. That statistic became an irrelevance as the enterprising full-back Johnny Herd switched from the left flank to right and heaved in a long throw. The otherwise accomplished Ricardo Carvalho’s attempt at a defensive header only directed the ball more dangerously into the heart of the penalty area; the onrushing Clarke could hardly believe his luck.

A week earlier at Fulham, Chelsea’s susceptibility to the high ball into the box was plain. Again it proved their downfall. The absence of John Terry has an effect in this area but Scolari did not make excuses. “Carvalho tried to win but the result says that we did not play very good,” he admitted. “But on the pitch we built so many chances to score goals. We were better than Southend, much better. We just did not get that second goal.”

According to Scolari’s observations, Chelsea manufactured 15 clear scoring opportunities. Some might insist there were more but the way that so many glowing chances went to waste is clearly a concern and the fact that 16-goal top-scorer Nicolas Anelka sat almost motionless on the substitutes’ bench throughout riled and puzzled many a frustrated home supporter.

Take nothing away from Southend. They more than deserve the financial rewards that will be forthcoming a week on Wednesday. It was a performance that will spread optimism in the Juventus camp before the Champions League encounters in February and March, but Tilson was aware that his team had been blessed with good fortune. “The only way we were going to get a result was by riding our luck and that’s exactly what we did,” he said.“We kept hanging in there and then got something at the death.

“You cannot go out and play open football against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge because you will just get picked off, but we got men behind the ball and then came up with something at the end.”

Nevertheless the goalkeeping excellence of Steve Mildenhall was integral to Southend’s survival. Clarke’s goal had stung Chelsea out of any delusions of grandeur they might have had and nobody was motivated more than Didier Drogba to end the profligacy of Chelsea’s squanderers — Mildenhall brilliantly palming away a downward header from Frank Lampard’s cross from the left.

Chelsea should have had nothing to fear against opposition 53 places below them on the domestic ladder. Yet they had to wait more than half an hour to take the lead, when Lampard spotted Salomon Kalou, unimpaired by anything resembling a marker, at the far post and Chelsea’s less-spirited Ivorian neatly headed in his fifth goal of the season.

That should have opened the floodgates. It didn’t, and Scolari will address his men when they regroup at the club’s Cobham training headquarters this morning. His aim will be to find an explanation.

CHELSEA: Cudicini 6, Ferreira 6, Carvalho 7, Ivanovic 6, A Cole 7, Belletti 6, Lampard 7, Mikel 6, J Cole 6 (Di Santo 83min), Drogba 7, Kalou 7 (Sinclair 87min)

SOUTHEND UNITED: Mildenhall 7, Sankofa 6, Clarke 8, Barrett 6, Herd 8, Grant 7, Christophe 5 (Moussa 75min), McCormack 7, Stanislas 5, Barnard 6 (Freedman 75min), Revell 5 (Laurent 75min)

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