I don’t really believe in rallying cries, nor sympathetic pleas to an unswerving consensus. I haven’t written for Vital Chelsea for a while – it’s been a giddy twelve months for me, but that remains a story for another day.
In the time since I published my last article, which was naturally another piece of anti-Liverpool rhetoric, Chelsea have strode to the Premier League title, wrapped up some domestic silverware to brighten the cabinet, developed the best team that English football supporters have witnessed in recent years before dissolving into the murky world of mid-table mayhem.
To regale you with a healthy dose of the facts, we’re suffering from our worst start to a league campaign since 1978-79 and have won only two of our first eight league matches; facts that the media are pretty keen to suffocate us with. Players who tore the game apart a mere five months ago are shadows dancing at an empty table, whilst the general cohesion and confidence of the team is at a systematic low. It’s easy to point fingers, and by golly have we been doing so – Ivanovic, Mourinho, Hazard, Abramovich, John Terry, Eva Carneiro. The list rumbles on.
Lest we forget, it was these very same individuals who helped deliver us to the summit of domestic football – a peak which now glistens crudely out of reach. We’re in a rut and, with no easy route out, the default setting is the blame game. I suppose it’s easy to sing when you’re winning.
In times of trouble, there are always dull murmurings of discontent. Calls for players heads are frequenting the backbenches of the Matthew Harding, whilst Mourinho’s reputation seems to be dangling by a thin thread.
Think on this though – are we so fickle as to celebrate the successes and lament the losses in unequal measure? Football is a game of two halves, and we’re on the receiving end. It’s too hard to pin-point the exact reason for the team’s deterioration – a lack of summer transfer activity, a self-assuming arrogance, a lack of match fitness, calculated risks gone wrong. They’re all very reasonable excuses, but not points that we should be taking refuge from.
If we ditch Mourinho, what next? There is no-one on the market to match him, and even if there were, I wouldn’t opt out. The telling sign is the unending support from within Chelsea Football Club for the special one In Jose we trust, and at the moment in Jose we must.
As I said, this isn’t a call to arms nor is it any such self-indulgent cry for unity. It’s a simple reminder that, as Chelsea fans, we take the rough inexorably with the smooth. That’s the way it is, and that’s the way it’ll probably always be. We don’t make things easy, but magic seems to reside on West London green-turf. Unsurprisingly, I’m not talking about QPR.
Game on against Aston Villa this weekend. The road is long and winding – but it wouldn’t be football if it wasn’t.
Up The Blues!
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