Chelsea 3 Malmö 0 Europa League Round of 32 Thursday 21st February 2019 20:00 Manchester United: “F*ck Sarriball,” “You Don’t Know What You’re Doing” Oh but he does. He knows exactly what he is doing and he refuses to change it. There is a difference, and to my mind it makes it worse. Have you heard this quote about how he hasn’t worked on scoring yet? Apparently all the work he’s done, and its nearly March, has been focused on defending and we haven’t got to that part yet. There was also the priceless quote about how he would rather not have brought Zappacosta on against United too. “The system is a false problem. I know very well that when we are losing I have to put a striker on the pitch. But I want to see football in another way.” If this way doesn’t include attempting to win, then I am at a loss. It’s like listening to a nicotine-stained Yoda. I did the notes for this game, but if I’m honest, I was having a sh*tter of a week, including a bereavement and no part of me wanted to sit and write the same thing again about our manager’s total refusal to display any adaptability or change anything in the face of adversity. Much like everyone else, when that third substitution came along I could have gauged my eyes out with my bare hands. I’ll stick it into the book at the end of the season. We need say nothing more about this fiasco, for CHO’s evil side eye encapsulated the feelings of all perfectly. In the News: A transfer ban. Brilliant. Why? It’s got to do with the signing of minors. Are we guilty? There were charges on nearly 90 players. Most have been chalked off. But we’ve been found guilty on 29 counts. Chelsea categorically refute the charges and plan to appeal. How long? We wouldn’t be able to sign anyone until summer 2020. But the club would hope that the appeal would stall it long enough for us to go shopping in May. Don’t forget the Pulisic deal is already done. We do have a monstrous 41 players on loan too, so the likes of Michy, Kenedy, Mason Mount could find themselves punted up the pecking order. What about players leaving? It may mean the likes of Hazard and CHO staying, as we’d be loathe to let anyone go. Contractually its thought we could keep Higuain, but not Kovacic. Wenger to Chelsea. F*ck. And. Off. We’ve already been Wengered by Sarri we don’t want the genuine article coming in. The Press Plebs did their best to trip Rudiger up in the press conference, and they got enough of a sound bite to flog. He mentioned the incessant lecturing and how tiring it can be under the current manager. But then of course they completely downplayed his support of Sarri. Morata promised Simeone he’d sign for Atletico before he joined us. The revelation that he’s a rat is not newsworthy anymore. It’s long since been registered. The Others: Mane has been robbed twice now while playing in Europe. More hilariously, they failed to score at home and are up against it now. City got a scare against Schalke, who couldn’t quite hold on. Stellar reporting from the Daily Fail as usual. Ozil has apparently played his way back into Emery’s good graces during Arsenal’s win over Malmo. Sigh. Us: Starting Kovacic and Barkley. What was he going to do when it came to the substitutions?Hudson-Odoi started. Ruben was fit again after another back issue. Them: Some blokes I didn’t recognise accompanied by a lively Swedish contingent. They were all wearing matching sports bras under their shirts. Odd. It was not an inspiring start. Actually the entire half was atrocious. Kovacic was woeful, constantly bailed out by Kante. Only their inaccuracy saved us on 13 when Rudi was hung out to dry by CHO, who got an ear-lashing for his transgression. It was a rare error, for he was a beacon of hope in a raging sh*tstorm. By 18 minutes we’d woken up. Slightly. However Sarri was already sucking on his fifth fag butt, or the same one for the fifth time. Either way. Ew. If we play like this against City on Sunday, being 4-0 down after twenty minutes will flatter us. Somehow, the most uninspiring corner in the history of the world almost led to a messy goal on 31. By this time we’d actually managed to turn the possession around, for they had been on top until then. Hurrah. I could have stayed at home and translated some French war diaries instead of watching this dross. But then I wouldn’t have got to hang out with my most excellent Fancast brethren in corporate. The venerable Chidge and JK - the Smartie Pimp of Stamford Bridge. Malmo like rolling about on the floor. In Sweden, apparently if you lose possession it counts as a foul against you. I saw hardier netball players in my youth than this lot flapping their arms and crying at an extremely gullible referee. Finally a fair chance for Barkley on 40, one that he made entirely for himself. Jesus wept. Its a good thing we were in the posh seats, for when we went into the lounge at halftime there was a gin on the table for me. God bless you, lovely Bill. Though it would have taken more than one to dull the pain of that crapfest. And God bless Chelsea for providing bottomless pic’n’mix too. Because if I hadn’t been high on refined sugar I might have cried. When we emerged for the second half we could hardly see the pitch for smoke. A cynic, which I am, might think that it was a ploy from Chelsea to hide how awful to watch we were. As it turns out some very determined Scandinavians were willing to shove flares in some very rude places to get them in. I dare you to find a £10 an hour steward who will be willing to ferret those out at the gate. It wasn’t much better first off. The pitch invasion was the highlight so far, and even he gave up halfway across. Then something funny happened. Just as Chidge was saying, “this is going to be a tedious 0-0 and…” Kante was bursting forth, scorning all that is Sarri, ignoring his angles and simply running with the ball at his feet. He’s going to be in trouble. He might as well have run over to the East Stand and mooned Chidge to boot. The cigarette fug that lingers over our squad like a London pea-souper of old seemed to suddenly lift, the ranks led by Hudson-Odoi, who flicked the ball on to set us off for a second on 63, though The Beard put it in from an offside position. They now needed three goals which wasn’t going to happen, despite the referee, and especially not after he sent one of them off. A second goal followed from a Barkley free kick. Does he even do free kicks? Kante off for a spanking along with Ross to be replaced by Ruben and Jorginho on 75. I may have just been off my tits on sugar, but was the latter really booed by Chelsea Fans? I don’t recall it. Certainly not on the stadium wide level they’ve obviously reported it as in the Red Swarm. Ampadu was getting ready to come on, though from our prime spot we laughed at how he was subjected to a five page lecture from a folder before he was even allowed to remove his tracksuit. On he came for Dave, who despite his obvious effort is really lagging form-wise at the moment. The youngster is a future captain if he stays, Im sure of it. Straight away bossing everyone around and organising the defence. CHO was the star of the show by this point. “They only score when they don’t so what Sarri says” was one interpretation by us. CHO could have got another, Ruben too came close. It was the Chelsea Academy Show. Odds on one of them getting a start at Wembley? We’ve earned ourselves a trip to Kiev in the next round, with the temptation of a snoop around Chernobyl while we’re there… So: You’ll notice that I haven’t said “sack him” or “Sarri out,” I don’t see the point in shrieking about it. I regret that we are in this position again. I advocated bringing in a manager further down the pecking order in terms of previous glory instead of another prima donna, and this is what Chelsea did. That said, so far as Sarri is concerned, though he may have the potential somewhere to make his style of football work, it wont be in England and this is a failed experiment. Roma apparently want him. He’s demonstrated that he’s not willing to adapt to the Premier League, and that his stubbornness will be his, (and our) downfall this season. But more than anything, the thing that sticks in my throat is that he’s not once turned up to watch the emerging talent at the club. What kind of long term plan does he have if he isn’t interested in maximising his resources, knowing his personnel and bring them through as well as buying players in? Even if we pull off a miracle on Sunday, or in Europe, I still don’t see a future for him at the club. Plus he’s a miserable killjoy. Can he reap the positivity of CHO’s performance last night? No. Says he would have to get rid of Hazard, Pedro or Willian to make room for him. The latter sounds like a plan to me. Considering CHO has twelve years on him and the whole of Europe appears willing to offer stupid money for the Brazilian. I think the only reason Sarri is still here at this point is because it would be cruel and pointless to put a new guy in only to get pummelled on Sunday, because there is little time to effect that. The axe may well fall after Wembley, and there is apparently someone is already lined up to step in. My plan is to get sh*tfaced before kick off and laugh my way through it. See you on the other side. AC
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Malmo 1 Chelsea 2 Thursday 14th February 2019 20:00 Right now my brain is reeling. I never thought that I would hear myself say “Michael Owen has made me feel better.” If he is the voice of reason, then the rest of the world must really have gone to sh*t. Bertie is perched across from me, looking out of the window to catch a look at the Four Horsemen. I blame Brexit. And Torres. In the News: Another day, and yet more vague reports of clear the air meetings between Chelsea players. They’ve spent more time allegedly jawing about how sh*t we’ve been away from home than they have now actually spent training in the last fortnight. Here is the gist of the endless Chelsea press coverage since Sunday: Sarri is going to get fired Sarri is going to stay Sarri wears his own clothes to training, must be leaving Hazard is leaving Hazard is staying Zidane is coming (must be certifiable) Zidane is not coming Hazard will only stay if Zidane is coming Pulisic is confident we’ll have got our sh*t together before he arrives (I’m glad someone else thinks so) All of which can be boiled down to one honest headline on the Press Plebs’ behalf: “None of us know what the f*ck is going on at Chelsea.” Ramsey will be on £400,000 a week in Italy. Have they been watching the right player? Or is this going to be like when the Americans thought that they were buying Tower Bridge for a lake in the middle of Arizona? Speaking of Welshmen abroad, let’s hope he assimilates better than Gareth Bale, who is allegedly still communicating with his teammates in Madrid by hand gestures. Because they don’t speak chimp. Marcelo, who was complaining about this, should at least be grateful that they’ve managed to wean him off from throwing faeces at his colleagues like he did at Sp*rs. The Others: Everyone seems surprised that Sergio Ramos is a sneaky git. Where have they been for the last fifteen years? And poor Ole came down to earth with a bump in the warm-up competition. After admitting he was in fact human (and could do nothing about Alexis Sanchez, who has now injured himself by running into a linesmen) Pogba sent off as well as conceding two away goals. Arsenal lost in Belarus. To add insult to injury (or fake illness, if it’s Ozil) the referee sent off Lacazette too. If a Serbian thinks you’ve been overly violent you must really have given it some. Them: There was a Dahlin, which allows for all sorts of Blackadder inspired jokes. And a Safari, which is novelty. Other than that there was a bloke who played about twice for West Brom and a former Greenock Morton star. Us: We couldn’t even beat our youth team in training apparently, so here’s hoping for a miracle. Five changes. Alonso got a night off, as did Ruben who has slightly aggravated his back. Rudi, Eden, Kante and Higuain on the bench just in case and CHO is finally let out of the transfer request doghouse. Why did you make them? They asked. Rotation, he said. The club’s official twitter was trying to give it some oomph and inspire us all from the depths of Mancunian despair as we sought to claim our first away win of the year. Cant blame them for trying. Me? I’ve reduced my expectations drastically in the last few weeks. If we don’t concede four goals and aren’t sh*tter than a beep test contested by Phil Jagielka and Sam Allardyce, I will not cry myself to sleep. Frankly after Sunday I’ll be impressed if we can walk out for the handshake without falling over in a pile of bodies and soiling ourselves. If we can score a goal away from home I will be ecstatic. They were on a break which hopefully meant that they had all been lying about scoffing cake and/or beer. Their first time in the knockout stages, but it did not bode well for us. They came out wearing sky blue - which made me twitch. Alonso wasn’t actually supposed to have the night off, but he caught sight of that and was found at the back of the coach sucking his thumb and rocking backwards and forwards, curled into a ball and muttering Sterling’s name under his breath. In the opening three minutes we had already spent more time in the opposition half than the whole of the City game. By the time we reached 15 minutes the feisty home crowd were raging about the referee and lobbing missiles onto the pitch. Aside from one 50-50 where Luiz may have been penalised on the edge of the box though, the replays showed he was pretty bang on. They weren’t bad with the ball, but they looked like a team that hadn’t played a competitive fixture in a while. Uwe Rösler said he thought he’d seen things he could take advantage of. That doesn’t make him clever. We’ve been so bad of late at times that Stevie Wonder has seen things he can take advantage of when it comes to Chelsea. Happily though, Barkley fulfilled some of his potential tonight. He was in the right place at the right time. 0-1. Pedro Pony cross, defender should have blocked but fell over and it dropped to Ross right in front of goal for our first shot on target and his first European goal. Amen. They found themselves in our box shortly afterwards, but couldn’t fashion a shot. Kepa had had nothing to do so far, which must have made a refreshing change. They were pressing quite well though, and really by half time it had been a pretty even contest. So far we’d taken advantage of our one attempt on target, which came as a result of a defensive error, but I’ll f*cking take it. A promising start to the second half. Actual coherent football. As usual we made nothing of it though and they came back at us. Then Barkely was at the centre of it all again to punish the home side for throwing everything forward. Up he went - three on three with Willian who picked it up on the left and put it into The Beard, who flicked it into the net. Two away goals. Dizzy heights indeed. “They’ve just got to keep a clean sheet now” says the commentator. Moron. Has he not seen us? But they were tiring with half an hour to go, not surprising since they have been on an end of season break since before Christmas and things don’t kick off again in Sweden till the end of March. Barkley should have made it three on 64. What a peasant. Sell him. (It was actually a fantastic save that denied him) A Pedro Pony shot deflected just wide on 68, then a quick free kick on 70 almost fell to The Beard. We really wanted a third, and so Eden was getting ready to come on and really rub their noses in it. Then Kante came on for Jorginho on 73. One more would have made us nice and comfortable, and able to rest players in the second leg a few days before the cup final. So what do we do? We f*cking concede. Christensen done. You really can’t complain about not being picked when you keep making errors when you do get a shot. And Kovacic was sitting in the holding role after Jorginho’s departure, not Kante. And he was second best getting back. Would Kante have been? No comment. Straight back up the other end for a corner to try and dig us out of another mess, CHO on for the final five minutes. We huffed and puffed but with no more joy. Is it just me, or did the announcer in the background sound like he was doing an even more racist impersonation of a Chinese person than Peter Ustinov in One of Our Dinosaurs is Missing? Their goal had given them renewed vigour and they dug in at the end. Curse them. So:1-2 instead of 0-3. Our usual mantra: At least we’re not Arsenal. Our defensive integrity is as fragile as Lindsay Lohan’s virtue and a team that isn’t even fit almost pegged us back. But after Sunday this win is a bigger deal than it should be and my dreams of a tie in Istanbul this season remain intact, for now. That and as Michael Owen says - whilst you wouldn’t get carried away with us beating pre-season Malmo, you also shouldn’t get carried away with our demise when you consider we look favourites to go through into the last 16, we’re in the final of the League Cup, Fifth Round of the FA Cup, still in the hunt for top four. That’s a hell of a lot more potential for some sort of glory than most teams. Including Sp*rs. AC Manchester City: I stopped counting Chelsea: 0 Sunday 10th February 2019 16:00 Mother of god. This time last week I was watching a lioness chew the middle out of a still bleeding zebra and it was less gruesome than this. Someone’s just lobbed their membership card at Rudiger and I was so jet lagged this morning that I went all the way to the north of England and back without any make up on. Oh and I’ve smashed the screen on my phone. Sheffield Wednesday: Our reward for not cocking this up? United in the next round. Deep joy. Bournemouth: Dave and Sarri came to blows during a 50 minute show down which followed the Goon defeat - allegedly without raising their voices, like two librarians going at it over whose effed the date stamp up. Then this was lauded as the worst Chelsea performance ever. (Brace yourselves, you hadn’t f*cking seen nothing yet) “I want to see my football,” says Sarri as he says sorry. Hudson-Odoi was apparently left out to teach him a lesson after he asked for a transfer. Well we showed him. Or not. I wasn’t even safe from mockery after this disaster in the quietest corner of Kenya. All the United supporting Masai warriors descended on the camp to take the piss. Cue another lengthy, yet non-shouty inquest in the dressing room which resulted in Sarri not travelling back with the squad. Apparently he wanted peace and quiet to scribble some more in his notebook. How many pages must the thing have? He was “visibly dismayed” as he left. Not as dismayed as 1300 fans who made the trip down there to step into a parallel universe and watch us bent over by a team whose collective value is still less that what we paid for Morata. I’ll say it again. You keep talking about motivating people. If you can’t do it you shouldn’t be in any kind of management role. That said, if you earn £200k a week why do you need to be repeatedly encouraged to try hard? But. In short: another glaring display of what happens when Plan A doesn’t work and you have no Plan B. Chants of “You don’t know what you’re doing” as manager repeats what he does every week that it goes wrong (very little) and hopes for a miraculously different result. He might as well stand there and head butt a goalpost for ninety minutes. At least the fans would be entertained. Calm yourselves tho - Jose’s apparently going back to Inter. Huddersfield: In true Chelsea fashion we bounced back and destroyed Huddersfield. That’s right. Huddersfield, who look like they would get violated by a pub team. Higuain got off the mark emphatically. “He suits my football” says Sarri. As I rolled my eyes. You might love “your” football, but it you can’t win consistently playing it or you can’t adjust if you don’t have the adequate personnel right now to fit in with it, then your obsession with it makes you a fool on a hiding to nothing. Especially when you are nagging Hazard about not being selfish enough. Stop p*ssing him off, you nicotine riddled bellend. In the News: JT used to smash the dressing room up. Oh but if only he would come back and wreck the place now. Further revelations from Mikel this week confirm what we already knew: when you’ve got a leader like that in the dressing room it doesn’t matter how many managers revolve in and out. Can’t we just pay him to Skype in and scream at people now? We have nobody like this anymore. Save for perhaps David Luiz, maybe. Hazard wants to leave. No sh*t. At this rate I’m going to be grabbing Bertie my feline overlord and hiding the pair of us in his suitcase. The Press Plebs have already started photoshopping his head into skinny Real Madrid bodies. Apparently they are going to try and fob us off with Isco in part exchange. The same Isco who’s played three minutes in the last year of football. Exciting. Or we’re being linked with another of Sarri’s illegitimate spawn at Napoli or Richarlison at Everton. Jesus f*cking wept. Atletico fans raided Ikea for stuffed rats to pelt Thibaut with yesterday. Which made me giggle, but it has been a sad week for football. Emiliano Sala’s body has been recovered from the plane wreckage on the bottom of The Channel. But not before Nantes sent Cardiff a letter requesting his transfer fee. Do we perhaps want to wait until the victim of a tragic air crash has been laid to rest before you start with this sh*t? Almost as disrespectful as the two Southampton fans doing aeroplane impressions at the game in Wales. And let us not forget either that the pilot’s family are still without a body to bury when it comes to their loved one. The Others: The Scouse have stumbled enough to let City back in; losing to Newcastle, (I always did like that Rafa bloke) and drawing with West Ham. Pellegrini took a dig at how many offside goals they’ve scored this season. The internet says it’s eleven. And the internet never lies. It’s hard to follow then exactly in Kenya and Zimbabwe. Because literally nobody cares. Parts of Africa are verily the utopia we will all be seeking if they win because it’s like the Red Scouse don’t exist there. Ozil sick again? B*llocks. Sp*rs never learn. They’ve started banging on about winning the league. You don’t even have a stadium. Sit your arses down. And this Solskjaer wankfest is getting tedious to say the least. United have been crap for five years and it’s only taken them five minutes of results to return to being the smug, tedious b*stards they always were under Ferguson. They have ridden their luck ever so slightly, and surely they can’t keep this up? The guy couldn’t even hack managing Cardiff. He works for a team named after fungus. And yet, he admittedly looks streets ahead of Sir Smokealot in the Chelsea dugout right now. I’m going to approach this abomination in Manchester in the style of Sarri. Instead of making sense and producing a coherent narrative of what happened today, I’m just going to chuck random expletives and philosophy at the page with some observations and hope for the best. I’m pretty sure I will have more chance of qualifying for the champions league than Chelsea at the end of it... Manchester City refuse to leave the nineties behind. Bludgeoned half to death by Oasis in the build up, Faithless for the team announcement, Fatboy Slim for the team arrival, advertising Spice Girls concerts. Hundreds of them are sporting Marti Pellow yuppie ponytails. (Well, at least two) This is all without me even getting started on Aguero’s atrocious homage to the Red Scouse pre-millennium obsession with bleaching their hair. He’s having a midlife crisis at 30. It’s like The Royle Family have won the lottery and built a football stadium with the chavvy abundance of neon lighting, massive tv screens and the biggest badge in the world dwarfing the centre circle. It needed half the population of Mancland to hold the bloody thing up. The whole “centurions” tie in for the 100 point thing has been done to death, buried, dug up, and then flogged some more. From a team that can’t even sell out a Champions League knockout game. If you turn up at the Etihad to ignore anything that a team with limitless funds and an abdunance of player riches, the reigning champions, intend to do to play “your football,” which didn’t work against BOURNEMOUTH then you are either supremely arrogant or a complete f*cking moron. Of late said football has only worked against Sheffield Wednesday and Huddersfield. You’re going to get beat, and yet this is exactly what Sarri did. Empty seats all over the away end reflective of everyone’s enthusiasm at the moment. I envy each and every person that decided not to bother today. Hazard turned two of them after a minute, but Higuain’s feet were all over the place on the edge of the box. With scant exceptions, this was about as close as we came to getting a goal today. Sexpest (special alias) had a better chance of scoring this weekend. Their first goal was a sh*tstorm of nonsense defending on our part. Phil Jones would have handled this better. A weeks work gone to sh*t in five minutes. Excellent. Yes the manager of flailing but when the players keep cocking it up, they’re not blameless either. To be fair despite the disaster we looked full of beans and showed intent as we sought to make amends. Having said this we then should have been two down within 7 minutes because of our complete inability to tackle. Luckily Aguero tapped it wide instead of in and looked pretty stupid. This was of course exacerbated by his mid-life crisis hair. Made up for it shortly afterward when the nasty sh*t hit a world class strike into the top corner. Then it was three thanks to a Barkley assist. I can’t tell you how devastating it was to look at the clock and see that not even twenty minutes had passed. Somebody find me a getaway car. I don’t care if Prince Philip is behind the wheel. Just get me out of here. Pretty sure in the first half hour that Eden was the only Chelsea player that had been in their box. Not that Higuain wasn’t trying, but he was getting less support than a girl with an E Cup wearing a bra made out of cling film 4-0 on 24 minutes. This game is not nearly so entertaining as the services when we were discussing what “love sausage” is. If you’re going to google it, for the love of god add “Marks and Spencer’s” to the search terms. Things I’d rather be doing than watching this: Attacking my leg with a rusty Masai spear and letting a hyena chew the thing off. On 26 we held on to possession for almost 30 seconds. This must be what it is like to support Huddersfield. There was still an hour to go. “Why the f*ck are you still here” they were singing. Because the effin’ coach doesn’t leave till full time and the only gin you have downstairs is Gordon’s. Peasants. 29 we won a corner. Huzzah. Now they were onto: “Shall we show you how to score?” Followed, outrageously, by: “Where were you when you were sh*t?” In case you hadn’t noticed, we were sh*t today. Secondly, I don’t recall you drawing 50000 crowds when Mark Hughes was in charge. We nearly ignited a comeback on 37 but the shot from Higuain was tipped over the bar by the w*nker with an emoji tattooed on his neck. City had to do nothing but sit and wait for the counter after the break. Hence why we ran about with the ball a lot. To no avail. I haven’t seen anything as hapless as Chelsea trying to come from behind under Sarri since Grandad Trotter unscrewed that chandelier. If you don't understand this reference you haven't lived and I can't help you. Mastermind began his substitutions on 52 minutes. Kovacic on for Barkley. 19 times he’s switched those two over this season so of course none of us, nor Pep saw that coming. Give the man a round of applause as he tries to prevent City from scoring again when we are already 4-0 down He needn’t have bothered. Ninety seconds later we were even more f*cked. Penalty. 5-0. Bournemouth was our heaviest defeat for decades. Now it’s not even our heaviest defeat in the last fortnight. Midway through the game you could still get 12/1 on Sarri being sacked before Malmo. If I could have got a proper reception I would have put everything I owned on it. Except the cat. But if I see Fat Sam within a hundred miles of Stamford Bridge I’m going back to Africa. For good. Kepa then had to punch away a free kick that threatened to make it six. Wait for it. Because then came the highlight of our evening. Hazard hit the side netting. Then Aguero went off. Never seen the slightly porky, evil twat move so fast leaving the pitch. Just when we were praying he’d waste some time so we could keep it in single figures. Pedro off for Ruben. Poor Ruben. He must have literally shat on Sarri’s plate at breakfast this morning to get sent in to this f*cking mess. This whole game had been like the end of a Tarantino film. It was inglorious bastards. And we were Adolf getting shot in the face 200 times. Best Sarri insult of the day: “Fraudulent scruff-bag.” Alonso off for Emerson. Because god forbid this should get embarrassing. More clueless than Napoleon marching in Moscow having kitted his whole army out in budgie smugglers. So: Catastrophic errors and lack of concentration today. BUT. The way we swing from getting battered to destroying people right now doesn’t fit with players suddenly deciding that they can’t but arsed every other week. This doesn’t happen. Maurizio did himself all kinds of favours by acting like a massive baby after the game. Took it out on St. Pep by stomping off. “This is not my football.” Shut-up about your football. For someone earning the money you are you should be able to deviate from your footballing philosophy if necessary to get results. Otherwise you’re Arsene F*cking Wenger, but just fatter, homeless-looking and smelling of fags. He sat there staring at the floor at 5-0 down. And even then rather than pondering what to do I’m pretty sure he was looking for a cigarette butt to suck on. It’s too late anyway, for we have already become Arsenal. And what have you actually got Zola there for? You barely acknowledge him. And you keep booting him and everyone else out of the dressing room to converse in private with the players when the sh*t hits the fan. What’s that about? No wonder you can’t get our house in order when half the residents are excluded from what’s going on. He also took a dig at Abramovich. He’d welcome a phone call from him apparently as he “never hears from him.” Surely you don’t want the owner interfering with what you’re trying to do every five minutes? You’ve been left to get on with it with only the expectation of making the top four, which is a f*ckload less than the demands the likes of Ancelotti got put it front of them. I’ve applied direct to Chelsea on twitter for his job. All I’ve asked for is £500k a year which I’d use to build Bertie his own house and keep it filled with premium cat biscuits. For me I only ask for unlimited Silent Pool gin and a chance to see Hazard in his pants before he runs for the Spanish hills. I’m going to drink Silent Pool now. Lots of it. Not Gordon’s. AC Chelsea 2 (2) Sp*rs 1 (2) Chelsea win 5-3 on penalties
Carabao Cup Semi-Final Second Leg Thursday 22nd January 19:45 I left you guys for eight days and I come back to a scene from the end of a f*cking Tarantino film. 6,000 rounds of spent ammunition and a bloodbath on the floor of the dressing room. Chelsea 2 Newcastle 1: So this started (when I was bobbing about on the Indian Ocean) as you’d expect and Pedro Pony put us ahead. Then we went all Chelsea and conceded, before Willian, who had inevitably been slated by everybody all afternoon went and scored a winner near the end. A more predictable day in the life of Chelsea you could not have dreamt up. So I resumed introducing myself to all manner of male giant land tortoises in their 90s that found me utterly irresistible and spent a week chasing me (slowly) about various islands. Arsenal 2 Chelsea 0: I was all ready to blog from the novelty of 40,000 feet, somewhere over Europe on a 283 degree heading on an Emirates A380-800. For they show live football. Huzzah. The down side? The coverage included Ian Wright. Bearer of the pettiest, loudest and most grammatically incorrectly articulated grudge in football because we sold his stepson. Surely being able to speak in proper English should be a prerequisite for television. The two small people who had been balling every since our second plane departed Dubai five hours before actually displayed more maturity, and made more sense. And I wanted to smother them less. Ten points from our last four league games. (Though largely while boring the pants off the fans) Win this and we were nine clear of them in the hunt for the coveted Champions League spots. Easy. Right? No. Because it is us. We got beaten up by f*cking Arsenal. Like getting bitch-slapped by your nan. We nearly f*cked it up less than thirty seconds in, and again before a minute had elapsed. Jorginho and Luiz the culprits. This became a theme. Two minutes of play and we’d only touched the ball to give it away. Then we would absolutely have been behind after three if Aubameyang could kick a football. It barely got better. Off the line from Koscielny after 12 minutes. Epic save from Kepa after Rudi lost his man in the box. I’m slightly concerned I may have been marooned in the Indian Ocean longer than I thought, looking at his mega-beard. Then we almost scored an own goal, meaning it was hardly surprising given what we had witnessed so far when Lacazette put them ahead a few seconds later. So this was the version of Chelsea that turned up for this one. God help me now I could hear two screaming brats and smug Gooners in stereo. High balls into the box for players almost as short as me, all the impetus of Sam Allardyce on a treadmill and we still looked sadly fragile when they broke. Then it was two. And I decided to invest as much in this game as Chelsea and switched it off to watch the camera taped to the underside of the plane approach the runway at Gatwick. Not a single shot on target did I miss as a result. In the entire game. Then there was the thoroughly Chelsea fallout of a manager complaining about his players to the press. Classy. No, it’s not all your fault, but your high seven figure salary surely puts motivating personnel somewhere in your remit. Much like having a Plan B. Transfer B*llocks: Incoming is Higuain. Is it the best signing ever? No. Is it a signing that promises much because he already has a bond with the manager and knows exactly what is expected of him? Yes. If he is willing to give it everything and not bitch and whine like certain predecessors. Even if he is but a temporary fix though, fear not, for we are trailing Zeneli - a much vaunted forward who is soon to be out of contract and whom we can pick up for as little as £5m from Heerenveen. I’ll leave you to ponder that one. On the outgoing side, Cesc made an emotional goodbye speech in the dressing room before bidding England goodbye to go an join Henry at Monaco. Then Henry got fired. Considering his last ditch attempt to save his skin was to try and Fail-lani on loan it is hardly surprising, is it? Bayern still won’t f*ck off re Hudson-Odoi. To the extent that we are considering reporting them for tapping up. They’ve apparently offered him a “staggering 85k a week.” Not staggering by Chelsea standards. If the club wanted to keep him, they would match that without a second thought. Which apparently they have and he has turned it down. Sigh. Morata edges closer to the door. Simeone reckons he can toughen him up. Good luck with that. I look at him and think “would he have my back if we got mugged in an alley?” I’m not sure which one of us would be running away screaming the loudest. Call me old fashioned but its not appealing in a bloke. He was basically dead to me after the shot of him drying his wife’s hair. Do we really want a man in the shirt who lacks even the motivation to take his f*cking Christmas tree down? And then jokes about how it can be there till the summer because he won’t be around? Can I say what I really think now or do I have to wait till we actually sell him down the line before I take him to task for being a sulky little bitch-baby? Sod off back to Spain and take your revolting attitude and your massive piles of money with you. Lord knows what he would have been like if he’d been dealt a normal hand at life and actually had to work massive hours to fund a roof over his head and/or feed his kids. You’d have found him lying on the floor of NatWest crying at the mortgage broker, or sitting next to his battered car on the M25 just shrugging his shoulders at passers by in the hope that someone would take pity on him and give him a new one. What a sap. For this bloke to stay and impress me now at Chelsea would take a bigger turn around than Bobby Ewing coming back to life in Dallas. I have little patience in the first place, and it has long been exhausted. In the News: Awful, terrible events somewhere near the Channel Islands with what is surely now the loss Cardiff’s new signing and the father of four flying the plane. Hope has dwindled into despair by now, but the family very much don’t want people talking as if he is dead until they have something tangible to prove it. Big Pete retires at the end of the season after 15 years in the Premier League. What an absolute treasure he has been, whatever shirt he has been wearing. Consummate professional, ambassador for the game. His presence as a player will be missed by all with a true appreciation of the game and I hope he stays involved. Solskjaer is set to move out of the Lowry already - at a cost of a mere £18k. Chequebook Pulis’s bill? A snip at £537,000. Even more expensive, Sanchez's goals are clocking in at £6m each at the moment. Bargain. The new in thing for combating muscle cramps appears to be pickle juice. There is footage of it being forced down Torreira’s throat at our game last weekend. Who was drinking pickle juice to figure that out in the first place? Footballers are notoriously stupid - what else can we make them drink by attaching some vague and intangible medical benefit to it? And happily some old faces have returned to the country. Ashley Cole has joined Frank Lampard’s Derby County (TM) and Mikel is now at Boro. Us: Apparently there was a clear the air summit after the Arse debacle. F*ck off. There is never any clear air around Sarri - just a fug of stale nicotine. But whatever did happen resulted in the players taking to social media to tell us how up for this they were. The big surprise was the omission of Alonso for Emerson, but much welcomed, for you can’t maintain a run of form that bad and remain in the side. Barkley started over Willian, and we had a striker. Which is newsworthy indeed. Them: They had three injuries. Three. Not the thirty the press would have you believe in making excuses for them. And a slender lead going into the second half of this tie thanks to the fact that VAR is a f*cking catastrophe. View from the West Stand for me, because those horrible gits were in our seats. The beginning was scrappy but at least we looked like we fancied having a go, which is never a given at the moment. Having been incapable of fashioning attempts on goal against L’Arse, it only took Pedro Pony three minutes to get us stuck in. Only took Lamela three minutes to remind everyone he’s a nasty little sh*t too, with some leftovers on Luiz. Cardworthy, but not if your name is Martin Atkinson, and you are a bellend who is going to spend the whole match choking on his whistle. Another cynical foul from Eric Dire followed, the first of countless infractions by football’s answer to Frankenstein’s monster. I can actually see Podgettino in the basement at Wembley with an industrial sewing machine and cast off body parts stitching him together. It would explain the expression. Shame the brain he is using once belonged to a squirrel. I don’t mind a referee letting a game flow, but if you’re going to let that sack of sh*t kick us up and down with impunity, then we best be getting away with leaving something on them too. The visitors were barely doing what was necessary to stay one goal clear of us. They had hardly even been in our box, let alone attempted to score, so when Kante triple-nutmegged them and smashed us ahead it was not in the least bit unexpected. Have that, tossers. So far we’d had them by the balls. Ben Davies limped off after half an hour to be replaced by Rose, which prompted a massed cry of: “He cried when we drew, Danny Rose, he cried when we drew.” Then we really socked it to them thanks to a bit of magic from Eden. I was beginning to feel reasonably good about this, which of course is the kiss of death for Chelsea. We should even have made it three before the break. The keeper was nowhere against Hazard on 38, and then a couple of minutes later Pedro Pony was in, but he just overplayed it. The only thing Sp*rs had been effective at in the first 45 minutes was fouling us. And not getting punished for it. If Atkinson was keeping tabs, then it would have taken nothing short of Hazard driving a Ben-Hur style chariot onto the field complete with spinning blades and severing Dire’s legs at the knees before he’d have been able to justify showing us a yellow card. Penalty shout before the whistle went. Just outside the box, and Atkinson didn’t give it anyway. Then a further golden opportunity to finish them off came when Pedro Pony was away, but he ended up channeling Solomon Kalou and running round in circles until he confused himself and nearly fell over. 2-0 it was at halftime. It looked promising for the opening seconds after the break, with a shot propelled into the arms of their keeper. Straight up the other end though and a rare Sp*d attempt was shanked well over the bar. Then, being Chelsea, we went and conceded a stupid goal. F*cking Llorente. Who hasn’t played a game of football since Alan Shearer had hair. The Beard was in on 51 to set us clear again, but nothing doing. They were time wasting already, and Atkinson suddenly started brandishing yellow cards about as if his life depended on it. But only if you were wearing blue. If you make the likes of Kante angry you need to take yourself off and do some serious f*cking self examination. Thanks to the f*ckwittery of the officials and our infinite capacity to make our lives difficult, the game descended towards end to end carnage for a while. “It’s so quiet at the Bridge,” they sang. Not as f*cking quiet as it is at Wait Hart Lane. Do any of you even remember how to get there? I set myself on a mission to try and get everyone around me to sing: “There’s no lights on, at the Lane,” but they were all too busy swearing at the referee. It took him until the 73rd minute to finally produce a card against a Sp*rs player. Which got just about the biggest, most ironic cheer of the night so far. Hazard came close to putting the tie to bed on 73, before Willian came on for Pedro Pony. Highlight of my night? As if Aurier wasn’t void of decency enough given that the police have had words with him about assaulting his girlfriend, he tried to kill his own teammate. Shame. Watching them clatter in to each other, then us ignoring it because it wasn’t a head injury was amusing. Not so much watching Sissoko depart the pitch slower than Bosingwa with a bullet in each knee cap. A nervy final few minutes, unless you were Emerson, for he was full of bombing forward and crossing the ball into the box. One of his efforts was so nearly met by The Beard that it hurt. Jorginho gave the ball away in a frankly terrifying position, which is all he’ll be remembered for in that game, but we survived. And he was good. The less said about Willian’s effort in injury time the better. And so we went straight to penalties. Eriksen - little rat-faced turd. Willian - First up, after that last attempt? Ok. I forgive him Lamela - cheating b*stard Dave - This made me nervous, but he was emphatic. Then up strolled Dire, with his ambling gait and the physique of a darts player. Both eyes facing in different directions and neither really focused on anything in particular as he concentrated deathly hard on remembering to breathe in and out. Miss. That, you scumbag, was for every last foul you got away with. Or in the words of my one Gooner friend texting me like his fingers were on fire, “HAVE THAT YOU LEGO-HEADED C*NT!” Jorginho risked being ripped apart for costing us anything by stepping up for the third, but his penalty was a complete, nonchalant p*ss take and never in doubt. Moura - seems to have aged 30 years since going to North London. Save from Kepa. Get in. Luiz hits the winner. Of course he does. Anyone who watched him smash one on on leg in Munich wouldn’t have doubted him for a second. So: Emerson deserves to keep his spot. Well done Barkley. What a shame RLC has been injured for this run of fixtures. Sp*rs have now failed to progress in five of their last six semi finals. Three of them against us. Happy days. Higuain has made more finals in six hours of being in England than any of them in the last decade. “Injury hit” they’ve called them in every match report. You haven’t got your main striker? Ours has been AWOL for about a year. We named Lucas Piazon on the bench. I’d forgotten he even existed. Get out of it you Sp*rsy, lightweight chumps. Let’s hope that none of the delay on the new stadium has been because they’ve been installing a trophy cabinet. AC Sp*rs 1 Chelsea 0 Carabao Cup Semi-Final Tuesday 8th January 2019 20:00 In the News: Sheffield Wednesday or Luton for us in the Fourth Round of the FA Cup. Klopp is blaming the wind for the Red Scouse’s hilarious early exit. I blame the fact that you didn’t give a sh*t, that you clearly thought it was beneath you to take the game seriously because you’re so sure that the league and the Champions League are both within your reach and the fact that Wolves were better than you. Bellend. Of all the TV pundits right now, I think I’d like to punt Jermaine Jenas into a vat of steaming sewage the most. With a nose clip on to ensure that his mouth is open. What a irritating tosser he is. How did he convince the media world that he was either high profile, or cognisant enough to provide football analysis for millions of people? There has to have been a Harvey Weinsteinesque blow job or two in there. He must have been blowing Sky Sports execs till his jaw ached because there was no way that boy’s talent, or lack of, was getting him anywhere. If he has a gag reflex left I’ll be stunned and if he played football as effortlessly as he yaps sh*t he might have been someone. Trash-talking Chelsea again. He has spent the week telling Callum Hudson-Odoi to go to Bayern, and now it is: “Eden Hazard has outgrown Chelsea and should leave.” Not as quick as Willian outgrew Sp*rs. Eh? Before he’d even got off their private jet. And says the man who could barely get on the Sp*rs bench when they were bumbling around mid-table and then retired at 25. F*ck and off. And Mark Clattenburg has once again been regaling with us with the story of how the Battle of the Bridge was the hardest game he ever had to referee. Last four times we’ve played them now. He’s like Uncle f*cking Albert. And Podgettino said he was going to approach this “smart and naughty.” The rest of us call it: “cheating.” Them: F*ck them. Us: Morata last minute injury, which left us with a false nine and a dubiously fit Beard on the bench. All the clamour, though, was around the fact that CHO got a start in a notable semi-final. A well-deserved start. We survived the first minute; Huzzah. Promising early signs, even though it took them all of two minutes to try and get a penalty by cheating. The first effort from the slobbering moron was solidly saved by Kepa on 4, but we were by no means cowed and pathetic like the last time out. We were using width, and playing with intent, in fact we could even be described as bright - especially CHO. Usually a first leg like this would be cagey and dull, but straight away it was not. At this point they were booing Alonso (whose only crime against them is to be better than them) and Willian every time they touched the ball. Sad f*ckers are going to run out of breath quick. Shame. Not only we were better than November, but they were a lot less committed than the opening spell of the league game that saw us trampled. The Diving Little Sh*t, for example was far less harassing so far as Jorginho was concerned. I was glad to see, too, that we have finally learned to hustle that little f*cker in the box in order to not let him score. We were the better side all night. A shot from Barkley went over on 17 minutes, a long range effort from Hazard a couple of minutes later was better, but still no cigar. Then along came VAR. I’m not seething with rage about it, I’m not about to do a Scouse and start a f*cking petition or demand the game is replayed, but it is stupid and frustrating. Firstly the linesmen have been told to still put the flag up. This means defenders stop. As defenders have stopped since football was a load of medieval farmers kicking a pigs bladder about and the flag was made from the flayed skin of a Scotsman. Someone with a less than ideal view, diagonal, then overrides the Lino on the spot. When it isn’t any clearer on the screen. Now, Michael Oliver is regarded as our top referee. It’s why he was there last night instead of Jonathon f*cking Moss. And yet the referees are apparently being “discouraged” from going over to the screen because of how long it takes. So in all, on a not clear call in a match of huge importance, the officials on the spot were overridden by men not chosen to be there, watching it on television like the rest of us. And with less than adequate footage. Because if Chelsea have footage from the halfway line, and not a vague cut across, then why do they not? This cannot become the norm. I can’t believe how many pundits have claimed Kepa should have been sent off. Surely KNOWING THE RULES OF FOOTBALL is a pretty basic prerequisite for the job? Anyway, they didn’t deserve it but they were ahead. I’ll also remark that it wasn’t necessary for f*cking Harry Kane to sling himself eight feet in the air but they seem to go in for this in a big way at Sp*rs these days. And their manager is the same nationality as Maradona. I rest my case. They were booing Kepa now too. Hopefully this meant they would pass out sooner. Kante proved to be our best hope of an equaliser as the half wore on. On target on 33 minutes, and he was the one at the fore again six minutes later to get in the box and try again. CHO missed the bar straight after. We’d had double their attempts, they were so deep they could have tripped over the f*cking Titanic, but their line was holding. Our best chance yet came when CHO hit a stunner of a cross in injury time that deflected off Rose. Unfortunately the keeper managed to just tip it onto the woodwork. He had looked completely at home in this big fixture. Another reason we shouldn’t sell him. Just like SHOWING THAT WE LEARNED SOMETHING FROM SELLING KEVIN DE BRUYNE. As you were in the opening minutes of the second half. An early free kick for Willian, up goes the hand signal (number 22 I believe, or 28) and then no joy. But we hadn’t dropped our level over the break and this was good. We were desperate for the ball to fall for us in the box on 49, but at least Hazard managed to manufacture a corner out of it when he couldn’t find a way to have a shot. After a one-handed diving save from Kepa at the other end, Hazard loosed off one of his running-along-the-edge-of-the-box specials on 52 but it was stopped again. It certainly felt like we were knocking on the door. Kante’s turn to have ago next and again, he forced a save, Alonso just not close enough fo the rebound as it flew back out. CHO was getting frustrated with nobody chasing his balls in the box, we could really have done with The Beard but he was clearly fit for X minutes and we wouldn’t see him until then. We were building such a good head of steam but the final punch wasn’t there. Christensen was the latest to just miss the target after a flick on from Barkley on 58. Refwatch: I don’t hold him responsible for the VAR fiasco. It’s a much wider issue. Oliver wasn’t afraid to show the yellow card as they took it in turns to foul Hazard, either. He is one of the only ones that this does not get past. He managed to draw a line between having a physical game and letting it flow without it descending to a Clattenburg-esque free for all of f*ckmuppetry. Is I suppose I have to be nice. Pedro Pony was about to leap into action on the hour, with Willian making way. Just as they started chanting the Y word in their thousands. Against the express wishes of Jewish organisations everywhere. How long can Sp*rs hold out before they have to attempt to get their house in order too? Harry Kane sat on the pitch wasting time, and then as soon as the game restarted they appeared to remember that they were playing a football match. This was concerning, as we had precisely nothing to show at the moment for all of our hard work. But Hazard was really working hard now, he’d taken it to another, relentless level in trying to find a way through them. And yet still we couldn’t break them down. Barkley for Kovacic on 74 - which was a very “I’m going to make sure this tie doesn’t get away from us by conceding another” change. I can appreciate that. The Beard didn’t appear to be that fit at all, else I am sure we would have seen him already. He finally entered the fray on 79 minutes and CHO left to keen applause after another good showing. A little frustrating. Think of Hudson-Odoi as the provider, the waiter - with The Beard a starving diner waiting for his dinner. We could have undoubtedly stood a chance of equalising with them both on, but Sarri would have had to bring off Hazard, or someone from deeper, and you don’t do either of those in a first leg semi-final tie against this lot. I can appreciate that too. I can’t appreciate that Trippier has the worst sleeves I’ve seen, and in the world of football that is saying something. They look like he’s let a toddler doodle on his arm in permanent marker. I imagine the artist was weeping as they were implored to do that. Note to Sp*rs. It’s not a foul every time you lose the f*cking ball. And who in the name of all that is holy is Oliver Skipp? He looks like a librarian in his mid-40s. Then they brought on Llorente. How’s your career working out for you? He might have been playing every week if he’d signed for us, but of course the likelihood is that he would have signed for us and then become immediately sh*t. It was like the f*cking Alamo as the clock wound down. A goal was the least we deserved, but, oh well. Come and Get It, will be the order of the day at the Bridge in the second leg. So: Were we hard done by? Yes. Is it too late to turn it around? No. Oh, and f*ck Jermaine Penas. AC Chelsea 2 Nottingham Forest 0 FA Cup Third Round Saturday 5th January 2018 15:00 Transfer B*llocks: Sarri didn’t know on Tuesday that we were signing Pusilic. Don’t know why that should surprise anyone who has been paying attention for the last decade. One thing he does seem to want is a striker, which is unsurprising as we have one. Just the one right now. And he’s as fickle at times as a Frenchman marching on Moscow with a limp baguette and an empty bottle of wine. I’ve abandoned all attempts to fall in love with him as a player now. I just want him to do well, so we do well. I don’t feel any need to abuse him. A bidding war seems to be gaining momentum for Hudson-Odoi. Ignoring the fact that our homegrown quota is f*cked as it is with departures for Fabregas and likely Cahill, Drinkwater, Moses(?), we would be complete morons to sell this kid. Blue Squirrel says we’d rather he stay. If it goes any other way I’ll be angrier than Sam Allardyce locked inside Nando’s during a chicken shortage. Peter Crouch, the latest spouter of wisdom in the Daily Fail has sent Mowgli (Special Alias) into a complete tizz by suggesting that Chelsea will be better off if we re-sign Diego Costa. Yes and we’d be better off if we could sew Didier Drogba’s head onto the body of a whippet of a nineteen year old with impeccable ball control too, but it doesn’t mean it’s remotely likely to happen. Elsewhere United’s defensive frailties won’t be solved by Godin, who is going to Inter on a free when his Atletico contract winds down. Solanke has gone to Bournemouth, and is promptly out until February. You wonder if that’s Karma taking a dump on him for getting fat-headed. That giant leap forward he manipulated to go up to Scouseland, and now it’s going to be a long, tough path to the top for him from the other end of the league after stalling for more than a year. More impressively, Newcastle are apparently about to take a punt on Balotelli. Hurrah! English football can only be made more entertaining by the return of this harmless (relatively as long as the rockets aren’t pointed at anyone and the Lamborghini isn’t abandoned on a motorway) nutjob. In the News: Absolutely, unequivocally, brilliantly, the WORLD Jewish Council, as in ACTUAL Jewish people, have called on Rottenham Hotspur to ban the Y word flouted under the guise of a lot of non-Jewish people saying they have “reclaimed” it. As a club Chelsea have educated, they have punished, they have continued to do all they can, and only when they have the support of the entire game and every other club behind them can we hope to have it eradicated across the board with blanket, brutal punishment to all who say it. I don’t care what a living room of Sp*rs fans are comfortable calling each other. This is how it needs to be in the black and white circumstances of large crowds at football, because then you can have a zero tolerance policy that is taken seriously up and down the country. 11 glorious millimetres. Have you seen the argument about how this is accounted for by the shadow of the cartoon ball on the goal line technology? Or the petition? To have goal-line technology reviewed? Because cheating and referee handouts is, criminally, impaired by actual science and they’re not having it. All the England players are apparently coked off their nuts. I’d have to be to be trapped in a hotel with Harry F*cking Kane MBE (Massive Bell End) for weeks at a time too. In the world of Thibaut Courtois, he was beaten in the air this week by Santi Cazorla. Who is my height. That’s short. Very short apparently. Craig Bellamy, he of the golf club incident and general vile personality has stood down from his coaching job. He says he didn’t know he was bullying kids while he was doing it. If you asked me to name a former player for whom being a c*nt was so second nature he didn’t even notice he was doing it anymore, it would actually have been Craig Bellamy. Report on the cost of being a football mascot this week. Hang on. The COST?! Let’s name and shame them all: West Ham £700 Leicester £600 Sp*rs £405 - because £400 wasn’t quite enough when they’ve got all that faulty wiring to fix Wolves £395 Palace £375 Brighton £350 Burnley £300 Cardiff £255 Watford £250 Bournemouth £185 Swansea charge more than most Premier League teams. Everyone else in the league, including Chelsea, does it for free. And don’t give me the cash strapped revenue generation argument, because that includes Huddersfield and Newcastle. Who could do with ten new players each. The Others: Kane brought on at 6-0. Prompting a completely disproportional meltdown among some of the Sp*ds. Must have nicked the last snickers out the vending machine at the training ground. Podgettino’s a right diva when he’s hungry. Far more funny was the fact that the Arsenal team bus was marooned in Blackpool because a home fan decided to sit on top of it and protest against the owners. No real surprises so far, apart from Frank Lampard’s Derby County (TM) making a two goal comeback against Southampton. Bristol City put Huddersfield out, but the latter have got other priorities. Newcastle got out of jail at the last to earn a replay at Blackburn, which they arguably don’t want and Norwich blew it, which thankfully means we won’t have a repeat of last season’s dross tie with them. Us: Wholesale changes. Captain Cesc for what could was probably his last appearance at the Bridge. Luiz remained, as did Barkley and Morata, but the rest were turned over. Ampadu and CHO getting starts, along with Big Willy, Zappacosta, Emerson, Ruben and Christensen. Bench mostly stacked with the first eleven but there was a spot for the Lesser Spotted Victor Moses too. Them: I basically recognised Jack Colback and his Miranda Richardson/Blackadder tribute hair and the Liam Gallagher mophead tribute on Yacob. That was it. And I sat and watched them play Leeds the other day too. One of only ten games to kick off at 3pm on Saturday on the big cup weekend. SEVEN early kick offs and EIGHT games on Sunday. Magic of the cup officially murdered by television. W*nkers. We almost missed this rare kick off because we got Rick-rolled in the old ticket hall just as we were leaving but we made it just in time despite the sing and dance-along. And despite the fact that I’ve got a new game at the turnstile with the trio of chaps installed to do a second bag check. It’s called - What’s the most ridiculous thing you can produce from your bag this season? Today will be hard to top, because it was a sort of snorkel full-face/gimp/Power Rangers mask. Don’t ask. CHO, who was fantastic today, was straight in but he was ahead of everyone and the cross into the box wasn’t met by anyone in blue. We’re rent boys apparently. Watch the Daily Mail ignore that. Zappacosta had had a go, before we saw some more good build up, but the ball was scuffed across the box by Captain Cesc. Forest by no means looked like whipping boys, though. Their support was vocal too, but most of their early energy was wasted on slating Frank Lampard. Closest yet on 12 from Morata. Ever seen Emerson take a free kick? Me neither, but f*ck me he went close. Morata went down on the edge of the box and the crowd was to in arms about the lack of a free kick. A replay showed that he was absolutely fouled. It took some fierce blocking from Forest on 17 to keep the ball out of the net, then we had a well worked corner from Cesc in which the team attacked without having to clear the first man (genius) but there was no way through at the end of it. We were getting in there, there was the actual intent, which seemed to be completely lacking against Southampton, but they had been solid at the last. Helps when you have seven men across the back at all times. Ampadu rampaged down the pitch on 28, but being fouled and left for dead owing to the incompetence of the referee he could only get so far. In the meantime he was awarding Forest soft free kicks. He swung our way soon after. Brilliantly drawn foul from Ruben in the box, he’d had been running about like a man possessed. Penalty. Cesc. It was his swan-song after all. So we’ll forgive him for a very dodgy run up and a soft effort that was palmed away by the Forest keeper. Morata laid it off to Zappa five minutes later and his shot was fierce, but stopped once again. Ruben off on 41 - twingy back recurrent, and on came Eden. Forest hadn’t looked like scoring once. One paltry attempt that wasn’t on target. For the umpteenth time this season, we needed to start capitalising on all our possession and our chances on goal. But I don’t think Morata had been offside once, and he’d worked his nuts off. This was at least less boring than the Southampton game. Look at that for positivity. A bright start to the second half and it took less than five minutes for Morata to break the deadlock. Yes. Chelsea striker scores goal at home, but let’s not be mean. Hurrah. 1-0. I thought it looked like he was willing to take part in muted back-slapping with his team-mates, but wanted nothing to do with the crowd. Both times today. We nearly doubled the lead on 53, before they almost got on the end of a header up the other end. They were having a proper go, to be fair to them. How Morata missed on 57 I can’t tell you. I don’t think he could either, but he made up for it moments later with his second. They began losing the plot a bit at the back now. "Sh*t Derby County" we sang, and the quintessential “You’ve Had Your Day Out, Now F*ck Off Home” as they got excited about hitting the side netting. Bizarrely they were given a corner. Refwatch: Andrew Madley. Bobby’s older brother. God the latter must be bitter. This one got the hair and the thin genes. And he wasn’t dumb enough to get sacked for mocking disabled people. Reached nowhere near the incompetent thunderc*nt levels we once saw from his sibling. Odd choices between advantage and play on. Not entirely sure what a foul was and wasn’t but he wasn’t terrible. The away support had more stamina than their team though, because Forest were tiring. “We’re Gonna Win 3-2” they sang. Stranger things have f*cking happened at Stamford Bridge of late. Fabregas smashed it on 70 but it wasn’t going to be his day today in front of goal. Morata off for Dave - our one fit striker wrapped in cotton wool for Tuesday and shutting up shop. Barkley went close on 76, played in Hazard who found Emerson for another go; but the notable incident of the closing minutes was the ovation for Fabregas as he departed the field for Kante. So: Third Round negotiated without any drama, but more importantly today saw a tearful goodbye from Cesc as his imminent departure draws nearer. Charming interview with him after, wonderful reception at the final whistle. Was he a dyed in the wool blue straight of the womb? Of course not, but when the club who forged him didn’t want him back he came and gave us his last top class years, often suffering personally on the field for the sake of the team. He walks away with a pile of accolades that he well deserves. (And which crap on the sum total of what Arsenal have achieved in the same period, no scratch that, since he was at primary school) God Speed to him in his next endeavour, and thank you. AC Chelsea 0 Southampton 0
Wednesday 2nd January 2019 19:45 New year, new entertaining Chelsea, we can dream right? Wrong. In the News: Pusilic is a Blue, the club wisely sorting that out ASAP and getting his name on the paper before CL qualification is settled. Or not if tonight was anything to go by. We’ve beaten the Scouse for his signature, after he decided he’d rather live somewhere where he wasn’t liable to get robbed when he’s work. On the other hand Thierry Henry is keen to get his chum Fabregas, his cougar-missus and their 15 kids to join him in Monaco. Ha, remember Dominic Solanke? Who claimed that 15-20k a week for doing the sum total of f*ck all at Chelsea was not enough for his stunning prospects and swanned off up to Klippity Klopp? Desperate to get a loan move now, perhaps to Palace, as he’s forgetting what it feels like to punt a football in front of a paying customer. Two soft Salah penalties and St Harold of Dribblington (MBE - Jesus wept) being booked for diving has referee pundits talking about a clamp down. Which will never, ever happen, especially to the first of those because he plays in Teflon coated Scouse Red. “Do we need blood for a penalty?” Asks Wurzel Kloppage. “No, you scruffy bellend, but an actual foul would be a start. Stop talking sh*t and go and have a f*cking wash.” And winter break nonsense - Messi dressing up as an elf, Costa attacking his brother with firecrackers and Cavani riding round topless on a horse with a bottle of baby oil sticking out of his pocket like he’s on his way to a Brokeback Mountain tribute party. (I’m so going to hold one of those, it would be a disco fuelled night of awesomeness) If this is what players get up to when they get given rare free time then it’s a poignant argument for making them all play football over Christmas. To save them from themselves and us from the photographic evidence. And just when you thought you’d witnessed all the narcissistic thunderc*nt that Pogba has to offer he starts practicing his goal celebrations in the warm up. Do f*ck off. And take your chavvy earrings and your dopey hair disasters with you. The Others: L’arse bashed Fulham, Sp*rs bashed Cardiff. The big one is tomorrow, obviously. Time for Pepalicious to pull his finger out and stop dicking round on Amazon Prime. I’m going to wheel out the Bill Pullman speech from Independence Day. It’s warranted, and I’ve made some amendments: “Good Evening Manchester City. In less than an hour, aircraft from here will join others from around the world. And you will be launching the largest aerial battle in this history of mankind. Mankind -- that word should have new meaning for all of us today. We can't be consumed by our petty differences anymore. We will be united in our common interests. To stop the unbearable consequences of the Red Scouse winning the league. Perhaps its fate that today is the 4th of July, 3rd of January and You will once again be fighting for our freedom, not from tyranny, oppression, or persecution -- but from spunk fuelled annihilation by every journalist in the world bashing one out over the end of civilisation as we know it. We're fighting for our right to live, to exist in a world free of Scouse smuggery. And should we win the day, the 3rd January will no longer be known as an American holiday, but as the day when the world declared in one voice: "We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We're going to live on! We're going to survive!" Today, we celebrate our Independence Day! F*ck the Red Scousers Day! Us: Giroud left the ground on crutches on Saturday, which adds to our striker woes considerably. No choice but to start with Morata up front, with Pedro Pony absent Barkley retained a place in the starting lineup and other than that it’s what you’d expect. Loftus-Cheek fit enough to take to the bench after a twinge. Them: Happy Charlie Austin day girls. Only it wasn’t because he was on the bench. Swines. Angus Gunn called into action whilst we were still debating if his dad played for Norwich or not. (Apparently yes) Southampton began by playing a 5-5 formation. We need to take a team apart to keep up with goal difference and to rouse the place a bit, for there have been a lot of results ground out of late. 75% possession and a smattering of attempts yielded nothing in the opening ten minutes. So I was not confident. Hazard played it in on 12 but Gunn beat him to it. We looked positive but there was no sustained momentum as yet. In fact as the next ten minutes wore on we descended into more of that interminable dicking around on the edge of the box and sloppy giving the ball away that bored us all to tears against Palace. Downwards we sank into a Pulisesque mire of bland, joy-sucking fare. In on 24 but Willian’s effort was blocked, chip across the box by Morata on 27 but not a single blue was storming into the box to meet it. Every relegation fodder team in the league’s team talk pre-Chelsea is: “just don’t concede and they’ll a*se it up and give us a chance eventually.” They then spend the rest of the build up eating all the Milky Way Celebrations and Quality Street toffee pennies that nobody wanted over Xmas. On this note, f*ck eHarmony. Everyone’s suitability should be measured using a box of Celebrations. If you marry someone whose going to insist on eating all the Malteser ones first then your relationship isn’t going to last. Find someone who likes the Milky Ways, or is at least willing to eat them so you don’t have to. That’ll be true love. 29 Morata scythed down. How we could play advantage when our striker was lying on the floor dying and we were supposed to be attacking, only Jonathon Moss can tell you. Hazard had the skill to get a corner out of it but as usual we didn’t clear the first man. Best chance yet on 32. High ball brought down well by Morata but his shot was over. Highlight of the night so far was Boycie’s phone vibrating in his pocket and giving both of us a surprise. Willian was off five minutes later - he didn’t look like he wanted to be out there at all to be honest. Our only remotely-capable-of-attacking options on the bench tonight were Cesc or Ruben, and we got the latter, who immediately tried to inject some pace into proceedings. Finally we looked like we might score, or at least add a second shot on target on 39, but some bloke called Valery deflected it wide. A corner on 41. We cheered like Gooners. Eden cleared several men, but the final attempt from Alonso was tame and knocked out. I chose today to ban myself from eating junk, in fact from eating anything after 6pm because a bellend in Chicago who shall remain nameless (let’s call him Budget Robert Downey Jr) convinced me it was a good idea. Wrong night. I day there at half time gnawing miserably on my own fist after that display. Some other moron who shall remain nameless (Mowgli) reckons I should try and be more positive in 2019. Says the bloke who stayed at home with his cat tonight instead of sitting through that. Here goes: Morata was only offside once. I feel much better now, she lied. The game had given us nothing to talk about, so we reminisced about sweets gone by, like Marathons, Opal Fruits and marvelled at how long it has been since Boycie last ate a chomp. He and Alf Garnett got onto retro jokes: What’s the difference between Joan Collins and Kit-Kat? You only get four fingers in a Kit-Kat What does Joan Collins put behind her ears to attract men? Her ankles What has Joan Collins got in common with a washing mchine? Both drip when they are f*cked. What did the world have against Joan Collins in the 80s? We bounced out for the second half, presumably to get away from the cloud of second hand smoke that hangs over Sarri in the dressing room. Change at the break for them. The little rodent that is Shane Long. Not that I’m bitter that they didn’t bring on Austin. We put a ball into the box on 50. It went sailing over everybody. But let’s be f*cking positive, eh Mowgli? At least it was a start. We also crossed the halfway line. We played several consecutive balls forward instead of back to Kepa. Let’s all do f*cking jazz hands. This positive mentality stuff is sh*t. I gave it a go, for a whole half an hour, but it’s doing nothing for my emotional well-being. It’s making me f*cking angry that I’m not supposed to be negative. How do people live like this? They’ll be the same happy-clappy b*stards that claim to have inner peace then complain loudly about there being no vegan menu in a restaurant. Do you know where you can find vegan food? In a vegan f*cking restaurant. Why don’t you go there and sit with the other three? Here’s a thought - if being vegan is so cool why does all their food impersonate nice food they can’t eat? Like sausage rolls? Or they’ll be the people who brag that they’re carbon neutral by cycling everywhere and drinking their own p*ss, when the emissions from one Beyoncé concert will ensure that all of them did it for nothing. Or the ones that label their offspring “gender-fluid” as they lop their tit out in the middle of Starbucks to feed little India or Barty without putting something over their shoulder as if nobody is allowed to disapprove of their god given right to sit massaging their boob in your face when you’ve just spent four quid on a coffee. Or the people who eat Kale instead of spitting it out like any sane human being who finds it imbedded in their dinner. Or the ones that moan about their dogs not being welcome in restaurants. I hate dogs, but ironically I’d rather sit on a table next to the f*cking mutt than them to be fair. See what half an hour of being positive does to a person? It makes rage. This game was worse than watching Michael Owen recite War and Peace. I’d not been so f*cking bored since, well Saturday at Palace, or Budapest. Finally we forced a save on 59 but the next few minutes were all Southampton. If only the team could show the same desperation to get stuck in as the back of the Shed Upper trying to get us singing. 65 and we had a shot on target. Be still my heart. One option left on the bench to try and improve this and that was Cesc. Off went Ross. Just what we need, a bit of pace, quipped Boycie. At least he might try and out the ball in the box, we prayed. Then wait for it, wait for it, we scored. But Morata was offside. Leading offside goal scorer in the world. Probably. Positive your way out of that one. I f*cking dare you. Bednarek, pointed out Alf Garnett, runs like newborn Bambi. We still couldn’t get past him. The away side were attempting to bleed all semblance of football out of the tie now, fully indulged by (Refwatch:) Jonathan Moss. Happy new year to you too PGMOL, you b*stards. Manages to make everyone in a half mile radius no matter their allegiance want to dig out his spleen with a rusty ice cream scoop. 77 the ball was here from Cesc. Ruben went storming towards goal and played in Morata. Should he have had a go himself? Irrelevant, as was the rest of the evening, as the actual attempt was saved by Gunn. Shocking time-wasting. I could have negotiated Brexit single f*cking handedly in the time it took Cedric to drag himself off the pitch. Then his instant resurrection was on a f*cking par with Christ himself. Suddenly we were playing with urgency. Where had this been for the last 85 minutes? Four paltry minutes added on. Cedric p*ssed that away on his own. There were chances to win it. Ruben to Hazard then Alonso with the shot but it was over the bar; a penalty shout that Moss never even considered in injury time. Off the line at the last. The sad Justin Bieber song they stuck on at the final whistle summed up the tragedy of my evening and guaranteed that I will never, ever be f*cking positive about anything, ever again. So: Two home games without scoring. People are talking about Dry January. You’ll have to give up attending football for the time being. If I couldn’t go and suck down gin after sitting through performances like that I’d end up in a padded cell. To be honest there’s a lot of turgid sh*t throughout the league at the moment after a busy festive season. Unless you’re the Red Scouse and you get given three non-penalties in every game to help you on your way. But heavy legs was no excuse to be dropping points tonight. Southampton were pretty woeful, but we were no better. Right now winning the Europa League looks by far the most likely route into the Champions League next season, because we utterly lack any kind of consistency that will see us finish in the top four. On tonight’s showing I’m not even sure we’ll get past Malmo. AC Crystal Palace 0 Chelsea 1 Sunday 30th December 2018 12:00 (F*ckers) In the News: Someone called Eddie has apparently announced to the whole world that Pusilic is on his way to us, in the meantime people in Germany are trying to buy Hudson-Odoi. Hummels to us is doing the rounds, as are tales of departures for Cesc and Morata. And Luiz locked himself out of his hotel room. That’s the best I can do given I’ve been in a chocolate/gin coma and we only played five minutes ago. The Others: Aboubakar Kamara caused a big stink against Ranieri’s wishes to take a penalty himself then missed. If they hadn’t won by other means he’d be getting kicked up and down the training ground tomorrow morning. As per usual the second anyone credits Sp*rs with the possibility of doing anything exciting, they roll over and stick their legs in the air. Except for Alli. He dives, then he rolls over and sticks his legs in the air. And United shamelessly continue to look like actual footballers after having sat around eating kebabs and slagging off their manager for the last year. Fuck sake Arsenal. Thanks for nothing. I think I’ve got a way to stop the unthinkable happening at the end of the season - I’ll put it up on Twitter in the week, but in the meantime it’s up to each and every one of us to do whatever is necessary to stop the Red Scouse winning the league. Take Dennis (Sitcom alias) for example. He submitted a request for them to fail to the Wishing Tree at Kew Gardens yesterday. You can let me know how you intend to do your bit on Twitter. For now they are six points clear, and no, even then Klippity Klopp has not taken five minutes to go and have a shower. Them: Too bleary eyed and half asleep to care at this time of the morning. Us: No false nine, yay. But the biggest talking point amongst us was that there was someone who looked suspiciously like Victor Moses was warming up. (I just presumed that he and Drinkwater had eloped to Costa Rica and opened a surf shack) Just for fun, at his old stomping ground, it appears, because he wasn’t even on the bench. Loftus-Cheek wasn’t dropped, he wasn’t fit, and neither was CHO after limping off on Boxing Day. Palace deserve credit for the effort they put in for the away fans. They put on your favourite tunes, the staff all wear your colours and they serve you burgers that are made of real meat, with actual lettuce leaves and tomato in. But still, you can’t forget you are in the grimmest place in the south: Croydon, where floodlights are needed for a lunchtime kick off to penetrate the all pervading gloom that hangs over the entire borough unless there happens to be a riot going on, with fires. It was a brighter start on the pitch. Its amazing how it looks like there is actual intent when you play with a striker. Palace were time-wasting already; and it took them six minutes to even venture across the halfway line properly. When they did, Zaha began a home trend of making ludicrous penalty claims. For once, I didn’t have a f*cking post in my face in what rivals Goodison Park as the most tragic old dump of a ground in the league. Still though, you cant see a thing that is going on at the other end. First thing we could make out was a headed flick on by Rudi on 13 minutes as he met a free kick, but there wasn’t enough on it to beat the keeper. Another loud and whiny penalty claim at the other end, but not even Craig Pawson is that thick. Actually, scratch that, because moments later he stood there and did nothing while they kicked lumps out of Eden Hazard. Jorginho walked a fine line between f*ckmuppetry and finesse at times today. He gave the ball away on 16 and Palace were off, but he made up for it by tearing the other way and winning it back. Moments later Kante hit one across the face of goal, but there had been no meaningful attempts at either end. The sheer amount of passes we were putting together was making my head hurt. 100% accuracy for Jorginho - I’m not effin’ surprised - they are all about two feet away! Sarri has given them a mandate to pass the ball quickly, one touch and then move it on, but a lot of the time if just seems that we are passing for the sake of it, to hit this target, and not because its actually the best way forward. Because there is no shot at the end of it. For the love of God, if I was a bloke I would have got a boner when Willian dribbled the ball five yards across the middle of the park. Finally we had a shot on target - right into the net, but The Beard was ruled offside. Was he f*ck. Another 6200 passes - and another shot, but Jorginho was way off the mark. A free kick right in front of goal, surely this has got to go in the right direction? Nope. But close from Willian. He nearly scored a moment later, his long range effort coming off the post, then Barkley hit the upright. Getting closer. Slowly. Then they were moaning for a penalty again. We were so bored we’d all begun discussing Sooty and Sweep at length, and whether either of the names could be construed as racist. This we couldn’t fathom, but we did have a chuckle at the realisation that Sue liked a fist shoved up her at every opportunity. Net result of the first half? A depressing amount of half-a*sed foreplay with only the faintest promise of actual penetration. With his one penalty, the hugely entertaining, chubby little blue who scored in the kids challenge at half time established as many shots on target as the team. So did his counterparts, leading to the Chelsea fans singing “Are you Thibaut in disguise?” At a man in a stuffed eagle suit after he let in four in less than five minutes. The second half was threatening to become as torrid as the first, when suddenly Luiz pinged the ball forward with sublime accuracy and of all people, Kante, surging into the box, bringing it down on his chest, thumped the ball into the net. Came out of nowhere. If anyone moans again about where he should be playing, there is your answer. Up front. By 66 minutes Palace were on their fifth handball penalty shout. Kepa was called into action, and then a half chance from us took a deflection. It could have gone anywhere, but it went just wide. Typical. If that was the Red Scouse they would have been given a penalty. Two penalties. Another goal from The Beard and another flag. Didn’t look offside to me, and he took a heavy knock to the foot which forced him off. About twenty minutes to go and on comes Morata. Entertaining this was not. “I’ve realised how we win,” said one wit behind us. “We make the opposition want to die.” One betting app claimed that the home side had had 37% possession. B*llocks. The guy monitoring it had blatantly fallen asleep. Off Willian came for Emerson and Ross off for Kovacic. All shoring us up to withstand the last ten minutes. That’s right, heart-attack territory. Deeper and deeper we got. Handbags on 88 minutes and Wickham put it way over the bar. Let’s not kid on that it was close like Scouse Sports News, it made poor Kovacic look accurate. Kepa was time-wasting now, and they weren’t happy. Oh well, reap what you sow. The last proper attempt they might have have had was squandered by Zaha in injury time when he gave away a cynical free kick. Didn’t get booked though. I’d have given him a yellow just for the stupid ponytail. Refwatch: Craig Pawson. In fact the only card he showed today was after less than ten minutes and aimed at Alonso. For punching the ball. If he thinks that is the word transgression he saw then he really is a bellend. And why does Alonso look like he’s been sleeping in a box? Two goals chalked off by the officials. Last week I actually thought: “Oh good, Atkinson. One of the better ones.” That is how bad it has got. So: Four clear of Arsenal now, two off Sp*rs, four off City. Not bad at the turn of the year. What is bad is who is sitting on top. It’s lucky I got a multitude of gin for Xmas, because I’m going to need it to survive their spell at the top and the transfer window, which is bound to be the usual clusterf*ck of made up bullsh*t and unsubstantiated press nonsense. Cheers. And thank you, to all those who donated to the fund for the domestic violence shelter. Not only did we shower the kids there with presents this year, but we supplied them all with winter coats, gloves, hats and scarves. We also provided a pile of clothes for a baby in particular need, and have donated enough to the shelter to ensure that all residents will be supplied with fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables throughout 2019 to supplement what they receive from the food banks. And Eden Hazard has stepped in with the club to treat one little boy who is a huge fan of him and Chelsea. You’re all stars. AC Chelsea 0 Leicester City 1 Saturday 22nd December 2018 15:00 In the News: Just the half a dozen articles crowning the filthy Scouse champions at Xmas. United flew to Cardiff - are you serious? Not as serious as Sanchez - who reckons he won a £20k bet when Chequebook Pulis was given his marching orders. Equally as determined as they are to give the title to Klippity Klopp, the Press Plebs have labelled the Mancs world beaters now they are under the wily gaze of… Solskjaer. I appear to have missed the part where he became part of the elite. Sp*rs buried a time capsule under Wait Hart Lane to be opened in 2068. By which time they hope to have moved in. Badoom-tish. And headline of the week? “Married former Arsenal star Arshavin at centre of storm after leaving striptease club on a HORSE and “hugging two women.” Verily, a slow news day it must have been. The Others: F*cking hell City. You have ONE JOB. And you lose to PALACE. Wait. Haven’t we got them next week? Us: Should absolutely have been capable of winning this. Them: Hang on. Where is Danny Drinkwater? Didn’t he play for them? I’d forgotten he existed. Does he still play for us? Only took a minute for the systematic fouling on Hazard to begin, but joyfully they were very ropey at the back. Kasper needs to lay off the mince pies. He’s twice the size he was. In bright orange. Either that or Easyjet had made an emergency landing in the goal mouth. Anyway, they were defending very deep and all the possession was with us, but this did not make the game exciting. This was like dozing in front of A Wonderful Life after a full Xmas dinner rather than the latter stages of Die Hard. Which absolutely is a Xmas film. We just couldn’t quite get our sh*t together at the last. First proper shot fell to Kovacic. Inevitable happened. He hit it like Mikel. Outstanding, sneaky little run from Kante, Luiz came agonisingly close from a corner to heading it in, a shot fell to Dave on 26 but it was well over. The ball dropped to Eden on the edge of the box, but he got a bit over excited and cracked the bar. They had the odd chance, forcing Kepa into a save on 41, but there were blocks going in all over the place as we tried to break the deadlock. Jorginho in particular kept a powerful effort driving low and goalward but it was parried by the Boeing 737 sitting in Leicester’s Goal. 76% possession. 10 shots, only two on target. - Must be more productive in the final third, she said in true pundit style, stating the f*cking obvious. And then proceeded 45 of the most depressing minutes of football I have witnessed this season. Jorginho, Dave and Rudi all undone on their way to a goal for the away side. Utter smash and grab. Would be that horrible little sh*t Vardy as well. Neat, tidy, precise and clinical, none of which we were in front of goal. They cut through us like Sam Allardyce attacking a turkey dinner. With his hands. At least this might serve as a kick up the a*se, I said. The Beard. Now. Loftus Cheek. Now. Gin. Now. To be fair we had flooded forward, and they had everyone except the cheating little rat in their own box, but it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference if you can’t score a goal. The Beard and Loftus Cheek came on for Kovacic and Willian. Now all I need was the gin, and a lot of it. Half an hour to go. Refwatch: Lee Probert. Winning no friends among the home support on account of not knowing what a foul was. Leicester slowed to a crawl, and yet Jorginho almost gave them a second. They were screaming for a handball from Dave as he slid in at the last to deny Vardy, who screamed the loudest about apparent cheating. That there was irony. It was turning out to be a dire day not only for football but for mankind with Palace three one up in Manchester. Not a happy home crowd. Some desperate stuff going in at the Shed End to even stay in it. Finally a corner for us with 20 mins to go. Dizzy heights indeed. Pleading with them to get forward now, but every endeavour seemed to break down with a shoddy, misplaced pass. It’s never a good sign when David Luiz is running about like a headless chicken in midfield. We wanted that one, killer ball forward, and so off jogged Jorginho for Cesc with 15 minutes to go. Handbags in the box with Eden desperately trying to get it over the line, jubilation from Probert every time he blew the whistle in Leicester’s favour. This was nowhere near Die Hard. This had turned into sitting through Home Alone for the 300th time. What exactly did the dad do that he could afford to take an entire family of nine to Paris for Xmas? I reckon he was using them all as drug mules. There was a pound of crack waiting to be ingested by little Kevin in condoms somewhere in France. Any collective support had descended into random obscenities being shouted out by frustrated fans who’d lost patience with our ineptitude. Ruben trying to back-heel the ball twenty yards when a Leicester player was in his way was not his finest hour and completely illustrative of how there was less plot on display than in any of the nine sequels to Home Alone that I was forced to sit through as a kid. Ten minutes to go and we still looked like doing precisely nothing. Then suddenly we were in, it was there, and it hit the f*cking post. This was not our day. We were plunging into obscurity like Hans Gruber taking a swan dive off of Nakatomi Plaza. So: I couldn’t blog the closing minutes. I was too busy trying to stem the flow of blood pouring from my eyeballs. Then I went and got drunk. Watford 1 Chelsea 2 Wednesday 26th December 2018 19:30 And now it’s Boxing Day. Hurrah. You go from incessant running about like a c*nt and being exhausted to instant saturation from the world about three things. 1 The need for you to buy more stuff in the sales after you’ve bankrupted yourself buying sh*t for people you mostly don’t like. 2 The reminder that you’re fat and need a diet with all the slimming ads. I can see that looking in the mirror. F*ck off. 3 The reminder that the only thing society considers sadder than a fat person is a fat person with nobody to love them. Cue television suggesting I may need to pay to find men who find me attractive. So begineths the eHarmony free trial inundation, in which they try to convince you that a Chris Hemsworth lookalike is just a few cheaply constructed psychometric questions away from your grasp. As if you could ever have Chris Hemsworth for £19.99 a month. Unless it was the scraped together remains of him that were blown up in the Star Trek remake. Again, f*ck off. C*nts. In the News: Don’t panic! Batshuayi is coming back to London! But only so we can loan him to Palace apparently. Rooney bitching that even the dinner ladies didn’t like CP. Even the warm ups are fun now, they reckon. He may be a loon, but the pantomime villain proportions now being dealt out to CP in retrospect are a bit f*cking cheeky. He’s not a nasty bloke. And at his worst the dinner ladies at Cobham still loved him. The idea that Fergie has swept in and delivered Solskjaer to them wrapped in tacky festive paper and tied up with a Xmas bow is a ridiculous narrative. The Others: What a miserable f*cking day for football, nay humanity. The Red Scouse spurred into a romp by diving for a penalty; the atrocious line up on BT Score literally painting the walls with spunk every time they scored. Not to mention the runaway victory for Sp*rs, the only team with any momentum right now to save the planet from the interminable gloating, the sanctimonious f*cking lauding by not only themselves but the entire congregation of Press Plebs, and at least a years worth of having to listen to everyone tell us that it has been a victory for football if those horrible Scouse gits win the league. I would rather undergo having a f*cking colostomy bag fitted whilst fully conscious while the surgeon listens to an ABBA back catalogue than experience this. Because, City have deserted the good fight, it seems. They’ve basically gone awol at present and signed a little pussy peace treaty that has left the rest of civilisation clambering to ensure the future exclusion of smug Red Scouse c*ntery from the world of football. Thanks for nothing. You b*stards. Don’t make me come down there and revamp Bill Pullman”s speech from the original Independence Day. But in the meantime our only salvation looks like coming from a team we want to win the league even less. Mowgli (special alias) just asked me which I would rather see with the trophy. I sh*t you not, at that exact moment I did a little girly half belch with my gob shut and some sick came up into my mouth. There’s your answer. United coast to a win. You cheeky b*stards. Two goals for Pogba. Shameless. Dinner ladies are supposedly off their tits in the canteen. Thanks to some shambolic defending that looked, well like us at our most inept, at least the Goons dropped points, she wrote before we kicked off, knowing full well that if we didn’t get our sh*t together it didn’t mean a thing. Our Game: I refused to go to this. On the basis that about now I’d be wandering round south Hertfordshire trying to find my way home with no public transport on a holiday all for the benefit of the Scouse television mafia who wanted to ruin Boxing Day for two teams by showing games all day and night. F*ck and Off. Them: By no stretch of the imagination should this bunch of jobbers be able to beat us. But that didn’t stop them last season. Deeney appears to have spent the last few months on a desert island because he’s halved in size. Not that I’m at all bitter about his weight loss. He’ll be signing up for eHarmony next. Us: A false nine. Against Watford. Provoked a distinct lack of f*cking Xmas joy in my world, I can tell you. Cheer me up Chelsea. Or else. If we don’t win this it will be almost as depressing as the counter next to the screen in the pub telling me that it is only 363 days, four and a half hours till Christmas. Ben Foster - the worst time waster in the English game was at it after two minutes, but our first attempt came straight away with Pedro Pony (he’s been demoted again for now) launching a curling long range effort towards the cheating scumbag’s goal. 70% possession for us in the opening five, not that that has done us many favours of late. F*cking Carragher coating the commentary box with phlegm. More joy. Nearly shot ourselves in the foot, but got away with it. Kovacic, who has been growing a beard, presumably so he can be distinguished from Hazard and actually get credit for some of his play, combined with Willian and they could have put us ahead straight after but the latter scuffed at it and it only made it as far as the post. Less fortunate was Kabasele, who ended up in considerable pain after a fight with the post. He tried to carry on, but nothing doing. Mariappa came on. He’s got more beard than head. That knocked all momentum on its a*se, not that there was much anyway. So it was back to square one. No shots on target, not even a corner, and feeling quite smug about me and my throat infection bunking this one. Deeney’s weight loss doesn’t stop him from hitting the deck like a sack of f*cking bricks and pretending to have been hit in his still fat head. Kante was giving it some Xmas welly in the middle of the field, even dropping the odd back heel in, but nothing had actually ignited yet. It was like staring at one of the endless f*cking Xmas repeats of that northern Royle Family muck, while they fart and smoke, and waiting for someone to ay something funny. The world is still waiting. Timely block from Jorginho on 26 minutes. Is that all we’ve had? Turgid would be overly polite at this stage. Pedro Pony put it across the face of goal straight after, but there was nobody there to meet it. As in a striker. I was more entertained by the Gooner who had just walked in the Old Bank dressed like an homage to Dick Van Dyke. Complete with mockney accent Watford had the best opportunity yet to take the lead on 31, but the final shot was pretty diabolical. Think Jonny Wilkinson after a dozen jäger bombs. Hazard was in on goal thirty seconds later, but it got away from him, and then commenced a lot of L’Arse like faffing on the edge of the box which resulted in nothing. By 36 we’d fully broken out into a light jog, punctured by occasional bursts of more exhilarating activity . Sadly we still almost conceded. We’ve got T-1000 Luiz today as opposed to the T-100 version. Nearly a minute for a throw in from one yellow person on 40. Yawn. Pedro Pony was almost in straight away but the defender put in a crucial tackle after Eden had wound his way up the pitch. The subsequent almost display of arse cheek from the Spaniard was the highlight of the game so far. Then he went off, forcing Sarri to bring on Hudson-Odoi. Eden you beautiful, sexual little beast. Capoue f*cked up, Kovacic leapt in. Eden only had the keeper and three defenders to deal with. Easy. Peasants. 0-1. Not that that means anything for us. If we survive five minutes I’ll be amazed, said I. Kepa diced with death by throwing himself in front of the lumbering oaf that is Deeney to block one equaliser, but he couldn’t stop some little wanker with short sleeves and gloves seconds later. Back to square one. For the third time. We lasted about two minutes. Wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to the end of halftime without declaring a war of mockery on Dick Van Dyke and his oversized flat cap, hipster knotted tie, albino attempt at stubble, his size 13-14 boys shirt over his jumper and his newfound habit of cheering for Watford. F*ck off. You just drew with Brighton. Even we beat Brighton. C*nt. It’s either him or the sad f*cker who sat himself uninvited at our table and managed to make two mouthfuls of Stella last 45 minutes. But to be fair he only bought it on the half hour mark after we took the piss out of him for lurking in the doorway like an unwanted ginger stepchild. One mouthful he managed during the break. Less impetus than us immediately after the restart. This was a blessed brief spell, almost as brief as the respite from the loud pontifications of DVD who was telling the whole pub what is wrong with Chelsea. It was like Trump lecturing Weinstein on gender equality. Still dominating possession, still not scoring goals. Looking more likely to concede than go ahead again. Delofeu tried to get a penalty. He was raised at Farca, but that’s still no excuse for being a cheating c*nt. Didn’t stop Salah earlier on tho. Home fans relentlessly booing Luiz now. Yawn. Alonso was robbed on the left on 55, but Watford couldn’t make anything of it. Hazard punched in the chest by Foster in the box. So he can shift when he wants to. Penalty. Eden sent Foster the wrong way. Karma. 1-2. Have that you whining yellow gits. I feel slightly less angry now. In fact if there are seven more corners and my bet comes in I may consider putting a £19.99 deposit down on Chris Hemsworth. There was still more than half a pint of Stella left by the way. I was half dead and I’d drunk more than him. Now it was our turn to take our time. Do I feel any guilt? Not even a flicker on my Giveaf*ckometer. CHO was still having a go down the right hand side, Willian was a flea’s cock away from making us comfortable on 72, but Watford hadn’t given up. Luiz baffles me at the moment. Even more so than usual he goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and he just wanders about combing his ever growing bonce behind his ears and looking as exhausted as Sam Allardyce after he’s finished attacking a fridge for Xmas leftovers and collapsed in a heap covered in sausage roll pastry flakes and chunks of turkey. He’s gone from HMS Pinafore Sideshow Bob to depressed convict Sideshow Bob. Kante went on a rampant expedition up the field to meet a perfectly weighted pass on 78 but his shot was wide, Deeney had a chance to level again less than a minute later but thankfully his impression of Eden Hazard side-footing the ball into the net looked more like Jonny Wilkinson after a dozen jäger bombs and a blow to the head. Barkley on for Kovacic. I’d bring on Giroud to kill it, says Mowgli. Idiot, says I, Barkley’s supposed to shore up the midfield. He’s a bank manager, what does he know, says Mowgli, I’ve been going Chelsea for years. Yes. Says I, and never once have you been sober. There wasn’t even a false nine about it now, literally nobody staying up, because Watford have seen how well we capitulate and were still searching for a share of the points. Fans not impressed by CHO being replaced with Emerson, but he wasn’t looking particularly comfortable as he jogged off. Hazard still taking the piss on 85, manipulating a corner. Jorginho of all people was hitting them from range. Sarri devastated to see his love child’s effort just skin the bar. Four minutes to survive our own idiocy, but we did a good job of keeping it in their half. Sting seemed to have gone out of the Hornets’ tail now. Mwhahaha. See what I did there. Refwatch: Atkinson. Gave us a penalty and not them. What a nice bloke. How rare it is that you can’t think of a reason to call the referee a c*nt. Corner for Watford with a minute to go. Ben Foster actually broke into a jog to go up. When he did it was laughable, and then he was marooned at the wrong end of the pitch. Kante could have had a go at an empty goal from the halfway line but the poor little chap panicked and started running sideways. So: Eden has now scored more than 100 goals for Chelsea. More importantly than that, if you follow my Twitter you’ll know that he changed a homeless little boy’s life this week. It’s now only 363 days, two hours and 32 minutes until Xmas. I’m going home to take a lot of drugs. Legal ones, for the benefit of the Daily Mail. AC Chelsea 1 AFC Bournemouth 0 Carabao Cup Quarter Final Wednesday 19th December 2019 19:45 Too drunk and then too ill to post the Vidi/Brighton write up before we played Bournemouth. Which is a shame because I think I was pretty hilarious. I’ll stick them in the book at the end of the season. In the News: And on some cold and bleak day in mid-December, behold, how along with anyone who’s witnessed either tenure at Chelsea, or his time at Madrid, or just about anywhere else, I turned out to be right. Chequebook Pulis has succumbed to his usual third season bonkery and taken a swan dive from the top of the managerial tree, face first yet again into a pile of money he didn’t earn. More fool United for not envisaging that when they signed him up. The 65 words they spent axing him is a lot less extravagant than the reported £22.5m payout. Shots of him riding away from the Lowry Hotel, who were relieved to finally get rid of their illustrious squatter, revealed that as with his departure from Madrid and others, he had immediately taken on the guise of a slightly chubby kebab shop owner as he absconded back into obscurity to do battle with his multiple personalities. Again. Down on his luck, but minted, and back at the right end of the country, he was spotted at Harrods amidst rumours that Real want him back. Surely not!? His replacement? Solskjaer. Who’s allergic to grass. Good luck with that, though he will reportedly be let loose with the United credit card. Sound piece of writing from Martin Samuel on the Y Word saga. Points out that the word does not belong to Sp*rs fans, therefore they can’t reclaim it. I stand by my permanent stance that you won’t stop some idiots using it, including our idiots, until you clamp down on ALL of the idiots using it, no matter who they support. And that should be the only aim. But is it in any wonder that Kick it Out is failing in its endeavours when everyone who works there walks out reportedly because of bullying? Not a good example. In Europe’s secondary competition United have got PSG, Klippity Klopp is on his way back to Germany. In terms of the important contest - the Goons are following in our footsteps out into the Belorussian countryside and Celtic got smacked with Valencia. All of the drama, however, will be in Malmo. Not because of the heavyweight contest we will be embroiled in with them come the new year, but when the European away faithful see the price of a pint. The Others: Piers Morgan. Highlight of the evening. Partly because wearing a Sp*rs shirt somehow immediately made him look like a sad little wino who spends his days picking up fag ends off the floor outside Lidl. Hurrah for Burton Albion, the trip everyone immediately wanted for the semi-final. But we had to beat Bournemouth first… Us: No false nine tonight, The Beard, Fabregas, Christensen and Emerson got starts, as did RaR. (I’m still not giving up until people do a little Raaaaaar type tiger thing when they see Ruben and Ross on the team sheet together) Them: We like Bournemouth. But not tonight. A return for Aké, close up of Callum Wilson, who some people bizarrely think is the answer to all of our striker woes. They sit 11th in the league, but their run of form is deceptive as they’ve had to play 3 of the top 5 in the last couple of weeks. And so it wasn’t surprising when the game started more evenly than you might expect. A curling shot from Dave on 7 minutes was easily claimed, and Ruben put a fantastic ball through to Willian on which the latter just failed to get his foot. Bournemouth were doing most of the defending, but by no means had they come to sit back and make no attempt to get forward. Their first break, after a quarter of an hour was promising, but the shot well wide. The Beard could have put us ahead. “Morata would have scored that,” said Mowgli (Special Alias) He’d only had a small Peroni. This was going to be a long night. Excellent interplay with Willian moments later, but the keeper parried the close range shot with his nuts. “Morata would have scored that,” said Mowgli, making me feel the need to punch him in the nuts. Ruben was having a good game, much of what was good coming from his efforts at driving us forward. Not all out own way though. Dave had to put in a solid block at our end, before RLC sent another ball out to Little Willy. Another confident save from Boruc, which was remarkable seeing as he looks rather porky for even for a goalkeeper and still we couldn’t break the deadlock. "Morata would have…” That’s as far as Mowgli got before I snapped: “Morata would have been offside you chump.” This reads like we dominated the game, but in actual fact the 75% possession didn’t leave us with any sense of ease about the fact we were still level. It just didn’t seem that one sided. A diving save was required from Kepa on 35, while I ranted about Christensen wearing long sleeves. Did you ever see Terry, Ivanovic, Alex wear pyjama tops? No. And plus, he’s from Denmark. Man up. We were destined to go into the break without a goal. Barkley put one into row Z on 41 minutes, then on 42 RLC chased down the wing, but when Dave crossed it in he found The Beard’s head, but not strongly enough, for there was nothing for him to derive any power off the flick and put it in the net. In fact a deflection was all that saved us from being behind at half time. And so it continued. Almost a lucky break on 49 thanks to a run from Ruben but the keeper beat Willian to it. Still we couldn’t get through, and we were going to need to ratchet this up with a couple of subs in the next ten minutes before people started panicking and slagging off the players. Sarri wasn’t going to wait that long. On 54 Little Willy went off for Pedro Unicorn. Moments later Hazard started taking off clothes too, which always makes me happy. “Here comes the heavy artillery” says Mowgli knowingly. I had to bite, just to see if he’s actually ever read one of my books. “Just out of interest, what constitutes heavy artillery? In the First World War for instance.” His answer? “Cannons and guns and sh*t like that. With big explosions.” So the answer is no. He hasn’t. But he might have flicked through and looked at the pictures. Barkley made way for Eden, and when Bournemouth began to ring the changes, the game opened up. The only reason it was still goalless on 70 minutes was because both teams continued to squander their half chances. Another deft block from Dave on 73 kept the score level, because still the stats didn’t reveal just how competitive this was and again we had to scramble it clear on 74. Christensen didn’t look too spritely when he went off on 80 for David Luiz, and with our subs done this could have been our lineup for the next forty minutes or so if we didn’t score a goal quick. It shows that it’s your first game of the season if you are sitting there slating Kovacic and telling him to f*ck off back to Madrid, “so we can play our own.” Who were on the pitch anyway. Kovacic was great last night. The difference, though, was the substitutions. Pedro Unicorn was charging about like he was high on magic fairy dust, on a one man mission to win it, and with a little over five minutes to go he combined with Eden Hazard to send us in front. Bournemouth thought that they were fouled in the build up on, but it would have been harsh to disallow it. Good call from the ref. Personally I’ve always thought anything Taylor was pretty much unimpeachable. She says, unable to keep a straight face. A couple of penalty shouts from us in the remaining time, but neither were convincing. Bournemouth still hadn’t given up. We very nearly had a second after a blinding run from Hazard and Kovacic in injury time, they look so alike at speed don’t ask me which was which, but the keeper threw himself in its way. They’d resorted to Defoe by now. Luiz lost the ball, but once in the box their Wilson thankfully back-heeled it straight to Ruben. We hit the post, and Luiz had to employ his most cunning sh*thousery to dump Joshua King face first into the chalk at the last. Still, with almost the last kick we were under threat, but thanks to The Beard putting his rather notable behind in the way of a final attempt on goal from the visitors, we secured the win. Thank f*ck for that. So: Utterly predictable that City would get a little jaunt to Burton, wherever that is, whilst we got sent back to Wembley. We better put in more effort than last time. In the meantime, on to Leicester on Saturday. We did the drop for the kids Christmas presents today, and there were not a few tears when we turned up with endless presents, equipment for the house and the possibility of funding deliveries of fresh meat, fish, fruit and vegetables throughout 2019. Without it the residents have to rely on the food bank, which is of course all dry goods and tinned. We’re nearly at the magic £1700 mark, but not quite, so any donations are still massively appreciated. You can join in by using PayPal: [email protected] by cash at the Leicester or Palace games or contact me for transfer details. AC |
AuthorAlex Churchill Categories |