blueballs

everytime chelsea lose i rant. and i rant again today because the defeat could not have been more deserved. and we were lucky to lose just 3-1. fuck, i don’t quite remember the last time i was so frustrated in front of the telly. must have been scolari’s time, light years away now. and usually we get away with playing badly, but wigan just happened to be so good today, concurring with our off-day.

hell, i don’t remember a single notable contribution by ashley cole. and i calculated only ONE forward run from bosingwa in his entire 68 minutes. the midfield kept losing the ball, and anelka at times was dropping so deep to retrieve he was like a central midfielder. that they kept the fullbacks quiet AND compressed the central midfield suggests that either wigan had 15 players on the field or chelsea were just not moving the ball with any acceptable pace.

drogba tried hard but was pretty much feeding on scraps. malouda was bright, beats the hell out of me why he was taken off when we were already a goal down. mikel was absolutely barrgghhhh i’ve never seen him play worse. cech, rush of blood to the head. carvalho was by far and away our best player, with some awesome last-ditch tackles and the like. tells you how badly we were on the ropes.

maybe this whole 100% record, new record for winning streak shit has got to the players’ heads. well, this IS a good kick up their millionaire backsides, lest they play like this against liverpool and lose 6-1. and i get torrents of taunts to endure.

liverpool next. i’m not sure what the rules are now, if cech’s suspension takes effect immediately. used to be in the match after, which means chelsea will still have cech for liverpool if the rules haven’t changed. fuckkkkkkkk.

from F*FA’s “regulations on the status and transfer of players”, page 15, article 17, point 4

any club signing a professional who has terminated his contract without just cause has induced that professional to commit a breach. The club shall be banned from registering any new players, either nationally or internationally, for two registration periods.

so let’s see:

1. age of majority = 18. below 18 = minor. minors cannot sign legally binding contracts.

2. football rule: no professional contracts can be signed before a player is 16.

3. gael kakuta was 15 when he signed for chelsea. therefore, logic decrees that he was 15 or younger when he was at lens.

4. therefore, kakuta couldn’t have signed a professional contract at lens.

5. thus rule 17.4 hasn’t been broken and fifa are idiots.

6. To people who point out “precedents”, Mexes was most definitely a professional at the time of his move to Roma. FC Sion were punished for signing a 36-year old goalkeeper, and I would presume he is a professional too. therefore, the punishment on Chelsea IS unprecedented and therefore a bloody farce.

7. to add to that, on the 25-man panel of f*fa’s “dispute resolution chamber”, there are 2 men from france and 0 from england.

8. the fi*a president claims to want to protect young players. and he does so by banning them for no good reason. therefore he is a hypocrite.

9. the esteemed president of the very association who is now punishing kakuta and chelsea for not honoring the divine sanctity of the contract described cristiano ronaldo as a “modern-day slave” when he was tragically and unfairly not allowed to be induced into breaking his contract and go to real madrid. therefore, he is a hypocrite and he is culturally-insensitive too.

10. therefore, i am 100% correct, f*fa are idiots, and its president is a culturally-insensitive hypocrite.

11. law firms who are interested in hiring the next celebrity sports lawyer please feel free to drop me an email. i am also open to being “induced” to defend manyoo in their pogba case.

and so it is…

Chelsea Football Club has issued the following statement:

Chelsea will mount the strongest appeal possible following the decision of FIFA’s Dispute Resolution Chamber over Gaël Kakuta.

The sanctions are without precedent to this level and totally disproportionate to the alleged offence and the financial penalty imposed.

We cannot comment further until we receive the full written rationale for this extraordinarily arbitrary decision.

okay at least i’m happy with this strongly-worded statement. down with the bastards! i mean, conspiracy theories may seem daft and stupid, but when shit like this happens SO OFTEN (i’m still bitter over the questionable refereeing of last year’s CL semis) it gets harder and harder not to buy into them.

response from lens president:

“Chelsea didn’t follow the rules. They contacted the player when he wasn’t even 16 yet, and while he had been contracted to our training group from the age of eight.

i do not claim to be an expert on french and european labour laws, but i’m pretty fucking sure that the abovementioned player could not have been of a legal age to sign a contract at EIGHT. doh.

:)

:)

have you ever seen chelsea win the cup? (yes i have!)
have you ever seen chelsea win the cup? (yes i have!)
have you ever seen chelsea have you ever seen chelsea
have you ever seen chelsea win the cup? (yes i have!)

thanks for the memories, guus. :')

Could be how just one moment of Chelsea not closing down space in the edge of the area in the 93rd minute led to the goal. Could be Drogba’s gilt-edged miss, which anyone who claims to be a top striker simply HAS to convert. Could be the five or six of our penalty shouts that the Danish ref turned a blind eye to, of which at least two or three were more obvious than the grass was green.

And probably would be how it’d all be in the papers tomorrow that “beautiful football has won the day and justice has been served etc etc”, when Barcelona had zero shots on target until the 93rd minute. Or maybe how Chelsea have decimated Barcelona’s defence personnel-wise, leaving them shorn of Marquez, Daniel Alves and Abidal for the final and laying half the trophy on the plate for Man Utd and some of the bunch of arrogant, unbearable schmucks they call fans.

We switched off in defence for the first time in 190 minutes. And they say you cannot even give Barcelona even one chance, or they’d murder you. And it proved to be true, literally. And cruelly.

The reactions and antics of Drogba in particular wasn’t savoury, verbally attacking the referee and calling him “a fucking disgrace” as he went berserk. He would probably face further punishment, and deservedly so. But could any objective viewer safely say that the refereeing was remotely decent? Would no objective person claim that Barca got lucky? And could anyone humanely say Drogba’s reaction was not understandable?

Abso-fucking-lutely gutted.

i did not blog about Chelsea’s whatchamacallitishingly amazing 4-4 draw against Liverpool.

because words would never do it justice.

like a hot autumn fling that you fear won’t stay for long, one is caught between enjoying it fully while it lasts and the unhappiness of knowing how fleeting this sojourn may turn out to be.

oh won’t you stay-ay-ay, just a little bit loongggerrrr

When Fernando Torres sweetly passed the ball past Cech and into the Chelsea goal, I was only barely halfway through my chips. What swept me then was this unpleasant sinking feeling that it was gonna be a long long night.

But never in my wildest imagination did I envisage Chelsea totally silencing the Kop and storming back with three goals. And not even the most starry-eyed romantic would have scripted the unlikely matchwinner to be Branislav Ivanovic.

Truth is, while I pride myself to be pretty good at deconstructing what goes WRONG when Chelsea falter, I am at a loss attempting to explain what went so ultimately right, why every single player was so impressive and playing so far above themselves, even Malouda. But I’d try anyway.

1. Michael Essien: Stop Gerrard and you stop Liverpool. Thought it would be simple enough for managers to grasp but apparently not. The Golden Guus, however, did, and Essien did just a brilliant shackling job on Gerrard which left Torres largely isolated and confined Stevie G to a few speculative long-range shots. Provided significant impetus in going forwards as well, and basically was here, there and everywhere. Which proves that he is not really human.

2. Didier Drogba: Missed two gilt-edged chances to put this tie beyond a shadow of doubt and totally humiliate Liverpool, but led the forward line excellently, putting himself about and bullying Carragher and Skrtel into submission. Held the ball up admirably allowing the likes of Lampard and Essien to join the forward play in doing so. Constant pain in the Liverpool arse.

3. Michael Ballack: He seems to not do much, and commentators, pundits and everyone else love to slam him. Yet every manager in his playing career loves him. I posit that he must be doing something right. Tends to cover more ground than anyone and contributes aerial ability and experience. And his through ball that set Malouda off to cross for the 3rd, truly worth its weight in gold. Loses the ball a bit too much for my liking though.

4. Ashley Cole: Kept Kuyt quiet by his constant forays upfield, making it necessary for Kuyt to shadow him and therefore be far away from goal, further isolating Torres.

5. Branislav Goalmachine Ivanovic: Unlikeliest matchwinner with two powerful headers from two corners. His zigzag run into the box for the first goal was simply classic, completely bamboozling the Liverpool defence and their zonal marking system. Did not forage forward as much as Cole, but took on Albert Riera in a more conventional manner as a defender and kept him comfortably in his backpocket. Secretly has lots of pace – as the commentator remarked, “where does he get all that pace from?”

6. Salomon Kalou and Florent Malouda: Tracked back in defence diligently, defended from the front well, putting Liverpool’s fullbacks under constantly unwilting pressure. I still won’t call them true wingers per se, but Kalou caused a few problems with his willingness and ability to dribble and take on places and Malouda had an exceptional game (by his standards), not giving the ball away and actually responsible for two crosses that led to goals, including the brilliantly-weighted first-time low cross to Drogba for the third. Okay there, credit where it’s due.

7: Guus Hiddink: Tactical genius. Please please pleassseeee don’t go! And how could you bear to????

I’ve only picked out the above honourable mentions, but of course like I had mentioned early in the post, the entire team was oustanding and played above themselves, delivering a scintillating display of attacking football (wow never thought I’d say this with Chelsea) and playing Liverpool off the park. What a slap in Scolari’s face, sadly.

In the debate about video replays in football, there are conservative apologists who are vehemently against it, decrying the potential loss of the “spirit of the game”, or even going as far to suggest that using technology amounts to killing the soul of the sport.

My response to them, respectfully, would be to tell them to get out of their caves and smell the coffee, which these days are made with rather complicated electronic coffee machines that I admittedly am not very good with.

The very nature of sport these days, in particular football, with the influx of commercialisation and megabucks, has been transformed into that of multibillion businesses, with the involvement of television conglomerates and worldwide audiences, sponsors from all over the globe and multinational billionaire owners. Costs of failure are getting higher, as the prizes for success are. By extension, failure due to refereeing errors is getting more and more costly.

Case in point, in Jeff Winter’s highly reductive but nonetheless illuminating “League Table of Injustice” (after 30 games), which is Winter’s view on how the league table should look, taking into account big refereeing booboos like wrongly disallowed or given goals, clear penalties not given or wrongly given etc, Chelsea top the table (Which pisses me off obviously). To be fair, the difference between 1st and 3rd is not that great financially, even if it is the league title in question.

Middlesbrough and Newcastle however, are 15th and 16th respectively in the “what should have been” league table, but 19th and 18th (relegation spots) in reality after 30 games. Assuming that this table stands at the end of the season, they both can be said to have lost their fight for premier league survival due to refereeing mistakes. This would cost, firstly due to loss in television revenues, roughly 20 to 30 million pounds. Also, the better players move on at cut-price transfer fees, the club receive lesser revenue through sponsors and etc, and the club may find it hard to recover from this crippling financial leak. The “parachute package” given to relegated clubs by the FA truly is band-aid to bullet wounds, and we have seen certain clubs which have been relegated sink like a stone and further down the league hierarchy. Sheffield Wednesday, Nottingham Forest and Leeds spring to mind.

If Sheffield United could successfully sue West Ham for fielding Carlos Tevez and thus contributing to their relegation to the tune of 10-20 million pounds, I do not see how the likes of Middlesbrough and Newcastle cannot sue the FA for those sums, providing they are able to come up with a creative and solid dossier on how the referees have contributed to their relegation. A stretch I know, but the West Ham case is every bit as ridiculous.

Therefore, I am an advocate of the use of video replays, and I propose a system not unlike tennis these days. In tennis, each player has 3 challenges to burn; an incorrect challenge leads to one of their 3 chances being struck off, a correct one leads to the wrong decision being overturned. Each replay generally takes about 30 seconds to a minute, the replay is played out on the big screen and the crowds are always excited.

In my view, such a system would not disrupt the flow of the game too much. The authorities can limit each replay and time of consideration for referees to a minute, the time for which will be compensated for in stoppage time. A minute is not far off the time that a game is stopped for injuries or substitutions (especially where the substituted player walks off slowly). Managers are entitled to a maximum of two incorrect challenges, and we have a fairer, happier game all-round. Referees have a chance to redeem their mistakes, and losers have less to complain about.

Thing is, no one would possibly listen to me and my ranting.

i’ve decided to take my amateur sports journalism a bit more seriously, so please indulge me a little!

What Would Jose Do? – A Chelsea Fanboy Site With An Exclusively Tactical Slant

the first post over there is on chelsea’s defeat to spurs, as seen from the previous post here. :)

guus hiddink has always been roman’s first choice, and overlooking some of his other follies, like getting rid of The Special One, he has shown good insight and decisive business-mindedness in swiftly sacking scolari when things went downhill. and he’s got a man who, whilst unable to ensure things will always be smooth-sailing in years to come, has got the style and the fearless streak and the tactical nous to finally get us out of our hangover over Jose.

great businessmen / investors may make mistakes, but they don’t make the same mistake twice, at least that’s what all those overpriced investment self-help books will tell you. and i think roman’s record shows that he has been a great businessman.

so please, roman, do EVERYTHING you can to keep our golden guus.

to lose one special manager, mr. abramovich, may be considered unfortunate. to lose two seems like carelessness.

fans of guus, please click here, and do our little bit?

first of all, let’s face it. chelsea wouldn’t have beaten liverpool even if we had 13 men, playing like that. i’ve seen better passing from camels with seventeen days worth of food strapped to their backs. and blindfolded.

but still, if that riley guy had any decency at all, he’d look at the replay, see that lampard had got the ball AND alonso had stamped on his shin, admit he had erred, and work to get that red card rescinded. and then retire.

and my oh my stevie G. babe of english football, MBE MoTM MVP MBA PhD H2O ERP IVLE KFC. what the fuck?! smashing the ball into a stricken opponent who’s lying on the floor, two-footed challenge with no contact with the ball, beating the crap out of a deejay cause he didn’t agree with his rotation system. pin-up boy/treasure/pope of english football.

that bosingwa stuck his boot into whowasit’s butt was funny. and that was the most entertained i had been the entire night. and of course, we did get our asses kicked in the end, where it most mattered.

(and the less said about florent malouda, the better)

in the first 10 games or so, chelsea were playing with incredible flair, winning matches, plundering plenty of goals and scolari was hailed as the best manager since sliced bread. then it all went pear-shaped as people began to suss us out.

as pressure mounts on the brazillian and calls for his head grow ever more vociferous, i think you can hardly blame the poor guy. this team was built for power and efficiency, to grind down opponents, to be disciplined and defensive, and to score goals from set plays and defend them perfectly and win championships chock-full of 1-0 victories. basically in the very image of jose.

new man comes in, but it’s been practically the same players, and in addition to winning matches and trophies the demand was flowing, entertaining, sexy football, the very way chelsea was not meant to play.

the question remains, what would jose do?