Football Friends Online – When 90 Mins Is Not EnoughTen Things I miss...a reminiscent Chelsea fan - Football Friends Online - When 90 Mins Is Not Enough Ten Things I miss...a reminiscent Chelsea fan - Football Friends Online - When 90 Mins Is Not Enough

Ten Things I miss…a reminiscent Chelsea fan

1/ Didier Drogba – The Monster

A centre-back trying to deal with a prime Didier Drogba was similar to a spoon with legs attempting to hold back a typhoon – Phillipe Senderos in particular played the role of ‘The Spoon’ wonderfully. Even when Didier’s touch was off and the ball was bouncing of him – he still scored. Who can forget him putting one in with his shin against Arsenal? ‘I’m back’ he said triumphantly after a breaking a small scoring drought.  It was a truly terrible goal that was simply scored because they were scared of him – lovely!

 

2/ We definitely were the best team in blue

Now this is possibly still the case – we’re still top four after all and in the 2nd round of the Champion’s league.  But what I particularly enjoyed is the blue and white scarves that were put on seats in big Champion’s League games.  A person with a degree of nostalgia would have said ‘Erm, aren’t they hooped and a bit like a QPR scarf?’ but no one did because QPR weren’t even in our division and were attracting a crowd of 17 people to home games.  The whole of Europe saw blue and thought of Chelsea – these were heady times. I’m sceptical of these scarves now – they’re QPResque let’s be honest.

 

3/ Duff and Robben

God, it was lovely having two proper wingers wasn’t it? I’d take Jesper Gronkjaer back now, a man whose crosses were so awful some of them actually went in!

 

4/ The deflected Frank Lampard Free-kick

Where did this go? Between 2004-2007 Frank scored to my mind about 33 deflected free-kicks that won us 33 terrible games.  Let’s not pretend that the Chelsea that dominated English football and retained back-to-back titles were always excellent – they weren’t.  But you would know at nil-nil and deep into the 2nd half that we could still win.  Frank would line up a free-kick and the whole ground would know it could be the moment.  The goalkeeper would know dive the wrong way after the ball took a fortuitous deflection of some poor defender’s arse.  The defender would have that defeated look of man who knew this was going to happen. The opposition fan’s would throw up their hands and make mental notes to check whether they were wearing their lucky underwear or not.  Chelsea fans would go wild!

 

5/ Being Cynical

We’ve had players like Carvalho, Ballack and Makelele – wonderful players but cynical. We could kill momentum in games, we could marginalise flair players until they were utterly useless – like fingerless gloves on a bitterly cold day. A kick here, a tug of the shirt there – we were the biggest bullies in the league – it was great. There was something great about going away to unfashionable northern teams and grinding them down – southern softies? Ha! If we played our home games on top of an evil mountain that housed an active volcano it would have suited us just fine. 

 

6/ Roman Abramovich’s awkward celebrations

His little face all lit up as he watched his team score goal or play a delightful bit of football – a heart-warming site.  I know he’s got his own issues at the moment but watching our team toil to a fortunate draw with Swansea must really irk him.  ‘This cost me a billion quid,’ he must think ‘I wonder what else I could have got for a billion quid?’ He could have created big things. I mean literally, he could have created the world’s biggest ball of yarn, the world’s largest frying pan, or the world’s largest gob-stopper – if that’s not a great way of using excess wealth I don’t know what is.  Instead in recent times he has overseen the evolution of Florent Malouda from a relatively effective wide player to an ineffective central midfield player – a process similar to converting a teabag into a house brick.

 

7/ Claude

He was just great wasn’t he? In the end pundits came to complete standstill when it came to describing how utterly effective he was at his role. My particular favourite moment was when he was circled on Match of The Day as the pundit spoke about his brilliance.  What was he doing? He was standing on the halfway line with his hands on his hips as we took a corner.  That’s how brilliant he was – he could be complemented for doing nothing.

 

8/ Jose

I didn’t want to put this in as I think we should get behind AVB even if I have thought several times this season that he’s out of his depth – let’s see what he does if allowed to build a team. But let’s be honest Mourinho was a menacing presence and a pure winner liable to intimidate and inspire in equal measure.  AVB has been labelled the Red Menace in some quarters but mainly due to his ginger glint and his strange substitutions.

 

9/ Misfiring Strikers

That Kezman? What was he like? Poor sod. Still though, we could cope with a misfiring striker back then. Kezman even got himself a premiership winner’s medal to his name.  I do remember him having a good game against Barcelona to be fair to him – on reflection I believe he was converted into a winger in that game – a process similar to converting a tea bag into house brick. But it worked for us then!

 

10/ Being on the Winner’s Podium

It used to be almost inevitable that we’d win something! It’s been some ride since 2003 and the big blue machine hasn’t ground to a halt yet but it’s slowing down a bit.  But my first game was punctuated by a Neil Shipperley goal – he was my favourite player at the time. But if I’m honest with myself he might not be as good as Fernando Torres so we’re still on the up!

James Harvey

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