The Man in The Shed

The Man in The Shed 28th February Back to the league  There’s nothing quite like the feeling after a good win against a top six rival is there ? After playing in three different cup competitions over the last week with mixed results it was back to the bread and butter of the league last night. If you needed a perfect way to lift the team which pushed City to a penalty shootout before falling by the wayside it would be a home game against Spurs ! There’s always that edge against Spurs as well. Call me stupid but somewhere along the way I clearly missed the memo which explained why they should be hated above all others. In my book you get most wound up by a team because they have won lots of trophies in the recent past. So United and Arsenal would be at the top for me; Liverpool less so as they fail under the term “recent” and then City because they’ve only been good for the last few years. But Spurs, the team until recently which we took six points per season as a given,...

The Man in The Shed 24th February League Cup Final  So the third leg of our cup triple-header is upon us. This time we’re playing at Tottenham’s home ground – I mean Wembley – and it feels more like May than February; bringing back memories of the last FA Cup final – and of course we won that day ! I have to say that my (and I’m sure many others) expectations are quite low after that serious drubbing at the hands of today’s opponents. I always accepted that my beloved Chelsea would lose games here and there – even to opponents in Premier league sections 2 and 3 – but over the years we never seemed to lose by more than the odd goal or two. Seeking solace in the fact that even Man United were thumped five nil by us after winning the treble I wondered whether perhaps this was a price worth paying if we were to implement real “Sarri-ball” – whatever that means. The team sheet (do they still actually write / print these things off ?) appears on my phone and the first sign of...

The Man in The Shed 21st February. There goes the FA Cup / Malmo part two There are times as a football supporter when, despite your heart saying otherwise, you just know how a game is going to pan out. Sitting in the East Stand last Monday was a case in point. We’re 20 minutes in and you know we’re not going to score. The referee can add 120 minutes of injury time and we’re not even going to test the keeper, let alone hit the back of the net. But this is Chelsea, so three days later and here I am, back in my regular vantage point and off we go again. Could we be the first team to fall out of three cup competitions (even quicker than Arsenal) in seven days ? So many questions in my head – are the players in tonight’s starting eleven the ones left who still believe in the manager’s philosophy, the ones who are unlikely to play in the cup final or is this actually squad rotation ? There’s clearly been a selection mistake as who will come on for Barkley with Kovacic already on...