Ballack: We Owe It All To Paintball

The Blues and Avram Grant silenced their critics on Saturday by bouncing back from the Spurs defeat with a 4-0 league win at West Ham. “We had extra motivation to put things right after Wembley," commented midfielder Michael Ballack after the Upton Park victory. Cup Final Blues“If you play a big game like (the final) and you don’t perform, you don’t play well, everyone is a bit down and frustrated, then everyone wants to show we can play much better. "The paintballing was arranged by JT," he added of last Tuesday's exercise near to the club's training ground. "It is a small part in football but sometimes during the season you have difficult moments, especially after such a defeat by Tottenham. Then you have to do something a little bit different. It was not the main reason for the victory at West Ham, but we wanted to do something to clean our minds and our heads.” Return GoalBallack was dropped from the line-up for the Carling Cup final, but returned on Saturday and scored. Two others, Joe Cole and Ashley Cole, did exactly the same thing. But Ballack refused to give any more thought to the Wembley defeat, preferring to move on and focus on the Premiership, FA Cup and Champions League. "We have to accept any criticism, yet we know we lost only one game. But it was a big game," said the German. "That is why the criticism was more than for a normal league match. It was a final and everybody wants to win the cup. West Ham was a big, big victory for us. We know we have a good team and can play very well. We have two big games in front of us and I hope we can keep it going.”