The Man in The Shed

  The Man in The Shed 25 th  January 2021 – Why ? Why did Chelsea appoint Frank Lampard ? I am a Chelsea fan of 50+ years, a Londoner and a season ticket holder. I regard myself as a fan although not a die-hard one (I was in Moscow and Munich) but family commitments mean my attendance is generally limited to home games. So like many Chelsea supporters I am really hurting right now.  For the first time in over 20 years we had an English manager, a playing legend and a very intelligent man coaching our men's first team. He was idolised as a player to the point where he was the main reason players wanted to join our club. So this appealed to the hearts of many - including me. The romantic side of football. But 21st century football is a multi-billion pound industry and those who own top tier clubs are ruthless when it comes to their investments. All fans are constantly reminded how much money is at stake being in the Premier league. Those that aspire to operate at the t...

The Man in The Shed   3 rd March 2020 – Timing is everything Our third meeting of the season against Liverpool and leading up to the game I had feared the worst for our team. The sudden downturn is Liverpool’s form was somewhat of a surprise (with losses to Athletico Madrid and Watford) but would this be a good time or a bad one to play them ? A wounded opponent angry to re-assert itself or a vulnerable one ? To be honest two of our best performances of the season had been against Liverpool. The European Super cup was lost on penalties and a spirited home performance (along with a VAR disallowed goal) was ultimately not quite good enough. The team sheets were a positive sign for Chelsea. Whilst we had a slowly growing injury list, we could still put out a reasonable team; Liverpool had half a team of younger or squad players (Salah and Firmino on the bench). Two big calls for Chelsea – Kepa back in goal and young Gilmour in midfield. With Liverpool having...

The Man in The Shed   <pic> 29 th February 2020 – Bournemouth

The Man in The Shed 25 th February 2020 – Rematch It was inevitable that every Chelsea fan would want to re-live our greatest game ever in the lead up to this tie. Could it really be nearly eight years ago ? My proudest football moment was to have been present in Munich that night. The sobering thought was how much better it felt that team was compared to our fledgling squad today. Of course, Bayern just kept motoring along in the intervening years winning title after title. We were definitely the underdogs. Much preparation by a number of Chelsea fans to raise funding and then complete the logistics for the pre-match display at the Matthew Harding end to remind the German fans what they’d said before the final in 2012. It looked great (even if the wind made raising the banners a challenge. Well played ! Something of a surprise was an unchanged team. I was happy with that. Most fans near me in the Shed were realistic. We spent most of the first half ad...

The Man in The Shed 22 nd February 2020 – No way Jose There was no chance to ponder the dismal loss to United with another big game 5 days later ! If you can guarantee a fixture to raise a Chelsea team it is against Tottenham. Add a certain Jose Mourinho to the mix and that’s spicy enough. With both teams arriving on the back of disappointing losses who would raise their game ? It had been highlighted in the media leading up to this game that a certain Ethan Ampadu had led the Leipzig defence to a clean sheet and win against Tottenham in the Champions League. The poor lad had been struggling for game time on loan yet due to injuries he’d stepped in and played a blinder. Ferdinand on BT Sport had heaped praise on the young lad. I had to chuckle. Statistics told us that the next best team in the league on current form since Jose joined Tottenham (after Liverpool) were the men from North London. They were now just a point behind us in fifth place. The teamshe...

The Man in The Shed 17 th February 2020 – Deflated So, after the longest “week” in Fantasy Football history (oh, and the Premier League Winter break) we were back at home to Manchester United. Only time would tell if this benefits the players (no excuses at the Euros in the summer now) but certainly one or two of our young players looked in need of a rest (Mount for one) and the chance for one or two others to work back to fitness (Abraham specifically but Loftus-Cheek and Pulisic too). So, it was with some disappointment to see that both Hudson-Odoi and Abraham had been ruled out with injuries. I’d felt that we’d not suffered too badly with injuries this season (one or two here and there) but as a very tricky run of fixtures arrived so we were losing players. Looking at the starting 11 it was difficult to see where the goals were going to come from out of Pedro, Willian and Batshuayi - backed up by 3 defensive midfielders. The consolation was that United were lo...