Chelsea

West Ham, Darren Bent or snow can brighten our lives

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Image: addict_tedKevin


Always look on the bright side of life – even when hubcap thieves in Liverpool are casing the joint, intent on stealing our star striker, and our next opponents suddenly start winning. Monsieur Salut, off to Zurich to report (but not for the British media) on the Fifa decision on 2018/2022 World Cup venues, tries to keep smiling …

The Reserves’ great win at Chelsea aside – and we’re still waiting to hear from the much-praised Louis Laing with a photo we can post – it has not been a week for good news.

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Luke’s World: an Everton postscript

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In which Luke Harvey sticks up for his fellow youngster Jordan Henderson, whose performance against Everton has been sharply criticised by a number of longer-in-the-tooth supporters. But then Luke still cannot quite get Chelsea out of his mind …

Monday night’s match against Everton showed that you don’t have to be the best teams in the league to produce football of high entertainment value.

Nor do you need the best players in the world, for they are all dodging high tax bands and competing in that duopoly that is La Liga. While Real and Barcelona thump even the better teams in the league by four or five goals, it’s a continuous battle here in England.

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Luke’s World: The Chelsea Power Show

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It’s often said that being a Sunderland supporter is never dull.  Just when we might have thought we were heading for a straightforward, mid-table finish, we have the low of Newcastle followed by the high of Chelsea.  Luke Harvey reflects on an amazing fortnight, and applauds our players’ resilience in bouncing back.  

I could write reams and reams on my emotions and thoughts after the amazing destruction of league leaders Chelsea. None would truly convey all my feelings and none would be as good as Sixer’s succinct seven word round up, but the victory over Chelsea is easily as amazing as the Newcastle result was terrible.

The focus and commitment from the team was second to none. From beginning to end we looked in control of the situation, and even with a slender 1-0 lead Chelsea never looked like mounting a serious comeback – although I didn’t rule out the possibility until Welbeck made it three.

As already said elsewhere on this site: we were magnificent from front to back – and all without our talisman Darren Bent, proving we weren’t just a one-man team. With results since the Newcastle debacle looking very promising, it seems like Gyan and Welbeck have quickly formed an understanding up front – although surely Bent’s place in the team won’t be in jeopardy when fit.

While the £13m Ghanaian may be taking most of the plaudits up front – although I’m unsure where I stand on his dancing skills (I won’t complain to seeing them a few more times this season) – the rest of the team are deserving of equal praise.

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Soapbox: Things I will never do

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Having not missed a match home or away all season, except on the odd school night, Pete Sixsmith laments opting out of  the Chelsea game on the grounds of cost. Instead, the Horans’ sofa takes one hell of a beating.  

I have a short list of things I know that I will never do in my lifetime, things like never voting Tory or taking up English folk dancing. One of the football related things I vowed I would never do (alongside banging a drum at a match) was to pay £48.00 to watch a run-of-the-mill Premier League game.

Now, one of my golden rules has been broken. I have never ever voted Tory (or Lib Dem – they’re the same, aren’t they?) and you will never see me skipping around a market place with bells on my feet and waving knotted hankies at all and sundry. However, I do wish that I had spent £48.00 on Sunday on a ticket for Stamford Bridge.

If I had children (poor little sods) I could regale them in my dotage about how I was there at SJP in 1990, Hillsborough in 1973, Roker for the Manchester United replay in 1964. But I would not be able to say that I was at Stamford Bridge the day Sunderland slaughtered Chelsea (Paul Merson’s words, not mine).

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How not to scare Chelsea, Citeh and United off Jordan

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Image: A Love Supreme

Steve Bruce‘s dismissal of stories that he has put a £20m price tag on the head of Jordan Henderson is timely and wise.

One sure result of publicly stating such a value would be to announce to the world that Jordan was for sale.

And another would be to fix the quoted sum as the highly negotiable starting point, with one of the Manchester clubs, Chelsea or maybe even ‘appy ‘arry coming in with a joke offer of rather than less than half. For a player we very much want to stay at Sunderland anyway.

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Soapbox: a changing Premier amid the Liverpool/Man Utd shambles

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Change, says Pete Sixsmith with what he terms “apologies to the late, great Sam Cooke”, is gonna come. Dylan had similar thoughts (“Come gather round people …”). Pete’s belief is that the obscene spectacle of Liverpool FC’s disintegration, and the unsavoury air over Old Trafford, may be symptoms of a malaise that will lead to an overdue Premier League revolution …

Is it just me, or do I detect a change coming in the Premier League this year? Are we seeing the end of the Big Four period of domination? Are some of the middle ranking clubs ready to take over the mantle of European contenders from the perpetual participants?

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Soapbox: one league where Chelsea and Arsenal are bottom

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For he is an Englishman – unless he plays for Arsenal and Chelsea, writes Pete Sixsmith, borrowing from Gilbert and Sullivan (though didn’t Sullivan have a spoonful or two of Italian blood?). Ah, but Pete’s not on about light opera. He’s just been studying the Premier League squad lists, where “homegrown” assumes an elastic definition and Englishmen form an ethnic minority …

Lots of interesting things in the papers today:

* Derbyshire’s improbable win at Gloucestershire after being skittled out for 44 in the first innings

* Real Madrid having the audacity to suggest that Harry Redknapp was being economical with the truth over the Van der Vart transfer by denying that Bayern Munich had ever made a bid for him

* William Hague making it clear that there was nothing untoward in his relationship with his special adviser, even though they did share a hotel room during the election campaign.

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