Why I love Didier Drogba

I remember a couple of years ago I made a few articles about Drogba where I claimed he was second only to Thierry Henry in terms of best ever Premier League strikers in my opinion, and I got a lot of shiiit for it with people claiming I was stupid to rate Drogba so highly. With Drogba retiring this week, I've seen those same opinions coming out again, and I want to give my opinion on the player who is my favourite ever player without any doubt. Some of the best memories of my childhood were watching big games, cup finals and semi finals, premier league deciding games, Champions League knockout games etc. be won by Drogba, who always scored the big goal at the big moment to come to Chelsea's rescue. He won so many trophies for the club with his goals and it's for that reason he is Chelsea's greatest ever player in my opinion. Yes Lampard scored 200+ goals for Chelsea, but it was the moments Drogba scored his goals in and the miracles he created with those goals that make his career unique and put him right at the top of all time Chelsea greats, in my opinion at least.

I've done the calculations, and I've calculated that in 'big games' over the course of his Chelsea career, Drogba scored a total of 57 goals. This includes: 1 Champions League final goal (I'm sure everyone remembers the significance of that goal in particular), 3 Champions goals in Champions League Semi finals - 2 goals in a 3-2 win over Liverpool and the only goal in a 1-0 victory over Barcelona, 6 goals in Champions League Quarter finals - all crucial goals against Bayern Munich, Liverpool, Valencia and Manchester United, 3 goals in Champions League last 16 games - Again crucial goals vs Napoli and Juventus, 4 goals in FA Cup finals, including winners against Man Utd, Portsmouth and Liverpool, 4 goals in Carling Cup Finals including both goals in a 2-1 win over Arsenal, 4 goals in FA Cup Semi finals including a winner against Arsenal and an outstanding goal out of nothing against Tottenham (surprised their loudmouth fans don't remember that time Drogba manhandled Gallas and scored an outrageous goal that was literally like I said, completely out of nothing, when we whacked them 5-1 at Wembley), 13 goals in total vs Arsenal including countless match winners, 9 goals in total vs Liverpool including 2 Champions League semi final goals, 2 Champions league quarter final goals, 2 cup final goals, 1 Cup Semi final goal and 1 matchwinner in a PL game (The other 1 goal was the weird Gerrard backpass one lol), and 4 goals against Manchester United including a Premier League deciding match winner at Old Trafford in 2010, an FA Cup final matchwinning goal, and a Champions league Quarter final goal. As for Tottenham, well Drogba scored 6 goals against them, including an FA Cup Semi final goal and a Carling Cup final goal. It's also worth mentioning that Drogba scored crucial Champions League group stage goals against CFR Cluj and Valencia in 2008-09 and 2011-12, goals without which Chelsea would not have progressed to the Champions League knockout stages. In 2011-12, Chelsea obviously won the Champions League and in 2008-09 we reached the Semi-finals. So Drogba's goals in those games ended up meaning a lot obviously. And of course, on top of all of that, Drogba has also scored the winning penalty in a Champions League final. If you can show me Aguero, or Andy Cole, or whoever's record and compare the big games they've scored in compared to that list, then I would appreciate that greatly.

I understand the only actual criticism people have of Drogba is that he didn't score a ridiculous amount of goals. But people forget Drogba started his career late and only came into the peak of his career (At Chelsea at least) in the 2006-07 season. In 2010-11, Drogba got injured or sick or something (I can't quite remember what happened to him) near the beginning of that season and never quite was the same player, and on top of that he was semi-replaced by Fernando Torres midway through that season, with Drogba often unfairly being left out of the team in order to accommodate Torres under both Carlo Ancelotti and Andre Villas-Boas. Di Matteo then tended to rotate Drogba and Torres, I think in order to keep Drogba fresh for the big Champions League knockout stage games and latter stage of the FA Cup games that Chelsea ended up playing in while he was manager, so Drogba didn't play regularly from 2011 onwards and he was probably not at his best at that stage anyway. That means that Drogba basically had 4 peak years, 06-07 to 09-10. In those 4 years he won 2 golden boots, outscoring players including Cristiano Ronaldo (before his peak admittedly), Wayne Rooney and Fernando Torres.

Unfortunately the complete article is too long, so I'll post the remaining in the comments: