Late goal spoils De Lucas's joy

Chelsea 2 Viking Stavanger 1

The Uefa Cup, a competition which for the past two seasons has provided Chelsea's most humbling results and lowest attendances, produced a crowd of only 15,772 and a last-minute shock at Stamford Bridge last night. A patchy display was still worth the two-goal lead they held with a minute to play, when Ben Wright, a 22 year-old Englishman once with Bristol City, headed a potentially crucial away goal for Viking.

Starting the second leg 2-0 down, it would have been hard to see the Norwegians simultaneously tightening up in defence and showing greater ambition in attack. As it is, Wright's intervention has opened up the possibility of a third European humiliation in as many years for the former Champions' League quarter-finalists, following defeats by St Gallen and Hapoel Tel Aviv.

"It's definitely the highlight of my career," Wright said. "I was playing in the reserves at Bristol City and had a couple of games for Woking but I wasn't going anywhere." Then he did, and Chelsea suffered.

The visitors might have been expected to take greater advantage of a defence missing so many players that even Winston Bogarde, who has not appeared for two years, was in contention for a game. It was a bad week for him to be ill, and Mario Stanic, a right-footed midfielder, had to fill in at left-back, where he was regularly exposed by the former Manchester United reserve Erik Nevland. Playing wide on the right, Nevland set up chances for Trygve Nygaard and Tom Sanne before Chelsea finally broke through just before half-time.

Claudio Ranieri had declined to rest Gianfranco Zola, deciding that he needed the little Sardinian as well as Eidur Gudjohnsen and Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, who was seeking his first goal of the season and duly pouched it. The lanky Viking captain Brede Hangeland failed to clear a Jesper Gronkjaer ball, inadvertently setting it up perfectly for the Chelsea striker to round the goalkeeper and score.

He should have added a second 11 minutes into the second half after taking Enrique de Lucas's pass and brilliantly leaving three defenders flat-footed before finishing too casually. There were four other Chelsea chances in quick succession before that, none of which was on target. That did not seem to matter so much when De Lucas scored his first goal for the club in the 69th minute, running on to a pass by Jody Morris to lob Frode Olsen as Thomas Pereira unwisely tried to play him offside.

Chelsea felt confident enough of their two-goal margin to take off Zola. The visitors, in the meantime, had sent on Wright, a tall striker who played under the current Viking coach Benny Lennartsson at Ashton Gate, and, after drawing derision with an air-shot down by the corner flag, he had the last laugh, climbing above a static Stanic to head in a cross from the left by Peter Kopteff.

Chelsea (4-4-2): Cudicini; Gallas, Desailly, Huth, Stanic; Gronkjaer, De Lucas, Morris, Zola (Oliveira, 85); Hasselbaink, Gudjohnsen (Lampard, h-t). Substitutes not used: De Goey (gk), Zenden, Ambrosetti, Kitamirike, Keenan.

Viking Stavanger (4-5-1): Olsen; Dahl, Kuivasto, Hangeland, Pereira; Nevland (Berland, 85), Sanne, Nygaard, Fuglestad, Kopteff; Berre (Wright, 60). Substitutes not used: Nordtun (gk), Espevoll, Ahmed, Sorli, Sigurdsson.

Referee: M Tokat (Turkey).