Evening all.
Its been roughly a year since I last wrote an SOTN piece.
The last time I wrote, the world was a very different place.
Maggie Thatcher was still alive. Jose Bosingwa still played for us – he used to be a footballer you know. RVP was a Gooner. We were European Champions. Eden Hazard was still someone some of us knew about from Playststion and breathless eulogising from the Playstation players on fan forums. Fergie was still the best manager in the world bar none and we farkin hated him. Rafael Benitez was in football wilderness after dismantling a winning Jose side and destroying it leading to being chased out of Milan never to return. Robbie Di Matteo was still our manager and it seemed could literally do no wrong. The club would probably never sack him. I mean, they couldn’t, right?
Fair to say a lot’s happened since then.
Now, this is the point where I studiously recap all key developments since that time, you read for about another six minutes and then get bored and go make a cup of tea, perhaps eat a custard cream and never finish the article.
We’re all fans here and we all know what’s gone on.
Bloody mental isn’t it?
There’s something in our club’s DNA that screams DRAMA and CONTROVERSY and DOING THINGS THE UNFEASIBLY DIFFICULT AND HEARTBREAKING WAY, running through it like the barely-legible script in rock candy from a seaside resort. Rescuing victory from the dripping jaws of agonising defeat seems to happen nearly as often as that most Chelsea of character traits, the one that most of the rest of the Premiership laugh at, somehow, someway managing to contrive to take miserable, ludicrous, unimaginable, ridiculous, unbelievable, unconscionable defeat from the princely jaws of running away with it, doing things the easy way and winning simple. Because we don’t do we?
Never have, never will.
When Jose left the first time the squad kept on, much to Avram Grant’s relief, playing football with the never-say-die, we-will-not-be-moved spirit that characterised those golden heady days under his leadership. For some years we carried on doing our thing, a Jose team basically playing Jose football while Grant stood there and tried to look like it was his idea.
But I remember, first under Carlo, then AVB, many times under RdM, and seemingly every other farkin week under The Interim One – we started to give stupid goals away at the worst possible time. The other classic Chelsea stuff crept in at first and then started to take over. If there was a Premier League striker 20+ games without a goal, playing with no confidence and looking like a horse nervously regarding a UHU van, you knew he’d come to Chelsea and bang in a superb hattrick.
Cant score a goal in your last five games?
Conceded eighteen in those five games?
Cant buy so much as a sodding point, and absolutely doomed to ignominious relegation?
Sh*t and you know you are?
Come to Chelsea, we have many points to give away!
How many times did we say last season – we’ve got our Chelsea back?
So in ongoing search of my typically elusive point, (bear with me, its worth it) I would like to mention Jose Mourinho.
The press and opposition fans call him odious, arrogant, overrated and a money and glory chasing prima-donna who needs a good slapping and that in those things they think he is perfect for us.
They are right about him being perfect for us, I’ll give them that.
The man is Chelsea. He ‘gets’ the Chelsea thing. He’s not just the greatest living currently managing football manager (thanks Fergus) he’s also one of us. Those glorious years formed a bond with him – we all know that bond. When your dad takes you to your first game, when you stand and sing with the boys in the Shed for the first time, when you first strut down the King’s Road in your best gear, the bond is made. Most don’t get it. They are irrelevant. Jose is, regardless of whatever else he is or is not, one of us.
That he upsets the footballing powerhouses and authorities because he doesnt give a Kezman what you’ve won in the days of black and white telly etc, just makes him more Chelsea. He’s brash, he upsets the hierarchy, he’s flash, he’s a top dresser, and he takes the piss. He’s controversial. He’s dramatic. Jose is Chelsea in so many ways.
So what was all that about earlier? About the dropping points in stupid games etc? Well I said at the time, rather bitterly, that we’d got our Chelsea back.
We had, you know. ‘The Chelsea Disease’ had come back post-Jose. Our football under Jose was massively successful – we almost stopped dropping silly points completely. We were a machine, set up not to lose. The press massively made a meal of the many thousands of boring saturday afternoons when we were bored to excruciating boredom suicide by the boring boring football that was boringly served up.
Well whisper this quietly…
I loved it.
I couldn’t stop saying last season that I’d take a stultifying 1-0 or 2-0 machine performance any time over what we were likely to get that afternoon.
I loved being boring. And I was very rarely bored. How quickly people forget the top players we had back then. But the football, the winning and the Audi-like reliability of it all was most un-Chels. It felt alien to me at the time for all the joy and delirium it brought. Post Jose we’ve been waiting for our Chelsea back. And we got it.
The club has come a long way since Jose left, even if much of the real progress has been off the pitch instead of on it. As the club undergoes yet another change of image and we struggle to keep up – I’d contend that maybe we’re getting our Chelsea back again, only its Jose’s Chelsea. There are two types of Chelsea – Jose’s Chelsea and everyone else’s. So as we prepare, joyously, for the return of The Special One I guess it comes down to what you are hoping for.
Maybe you are like me and are hoping for a little less silly late-equaliser dropped points drama, a return to Fortress Stamford Bridge and a home unbeaten record going back years, and teams turning up to our place beaten in their minds. For a lot more easy 2-0 wins instead of pissing away yet another farkin two goal lead.
Or maybe you are the other way. Maybe you hope that Jose will turn up a more chilled out and easy-going manager after some chastening experiences in Spain, and that he’ll do things more sustainably than he did last time? Maybe you dont want the drama and circus he brings?
Or maybe you just cant wait to embrace the chaos of Our Jose’s Chelsea.
One thing us for sure. For good or bad, one way or the other, we’ve got our Chelsea back.
CAREFREE.
Share this article
