Top
Browse > Home / Match Zone / Chelsea 2-1 ManUtd: Blue it?

Chelsea 2-1 ManUtd: Blue it?

May 31, 2008

Email This Page To a Friend Email This Page To a Friend

Paul James

Stamford Bridge has always been a unique experience. When I first went there to watch Georgie Best weave his magic against Tommy Docherty’s excellent Chelsea side it was a crumbling ruin set against the railway junction at the seedy end of the Fulham Road. It had been built about ten years before Old Trafford when Britain was top nation and Edwardian industrial power was at its peak and the facilities had been largely untouched since.

The playing area was a vast, uneven field within a cinder track. Even a few years back when we watched Eric get his first United goal there the away end was a massive open terrace with one disgusting toilet cubicle and a urinal big enough to handle four people at a time and you stood behind vast metal cages, the vendors with hot dogs and drinks and monkey nuts on the other side handing their wares through the bars as if you were in the zoo.
When the club began to get rich, a succession of extraordinary stands went up, one of them so tall and vertical that the Special Forces could safely have parachuted from the top tier and the view from it was like watching Subbuteo. Now, of course, they live on the unimaginable wealth sequestered whilst infant democracy blinked in Russia, and it’s not like a football ground at all. It’s like going to an upmarket shopping mall.

You turn right past the brick and concrete offices, built in that universal architecture that would mark the financial quarter of a city in a modern Gulf State, you go past the big block of overpriced city apartments, turn left just past Marco Pierre White’s internationally acclaimed restaurant (where Peter Hain, the former Cabinet Minister, strolls past you on the way to the match) and the visitors’ turnstiles, only five of them, are discreetly tucked away opposite the Millennium Hotel.

Inside you climb the stairs and emerge into a modest modern stadium, the pitch as compact as possible in an area where land can only be afforded by Arab Royalty or Russian capital. This lends itself to an atmosphere of sorts, but unlike other similarly sized grounds, Anfield for example, or White hart Lane, it retains nothing of history or tradition. Roy Bentley would be lost. The Shed itself is celebrated by a plaque on the wall outside as if it were a famous writer.

The home supporters have been packed on the trains like mobile phones packed in a cardboard carton from Shanghai. They come with us up through Purley and Croydon, past the Crystal Palace ground, or from Wimbledon and Putney, past the Fulham ground, or from the West past the Brentford or Queens Park Rangers grounds. They all have blue shirts and sing “We support our local team”.

The pubs around my own home suburb will be packed with them watching the game on television, all assuring each other they have been lifelong Chelsea supporters. Before 1994 I swear I never saw a blue shirt in Wallington.

So we walk along the Fulham Road in the warm Spring sunshine with the gathering blue throng and pockets of shirtless lads loudly bearing raw suntans from Barcelona in good spirits “We’re going to win the football league again, this time at Stamford Bridge…..” Then we hear the team and my heart sinks.

I know this is sandwiched between two Barcelona games. I know Chelsea, who have been whingeing about the injustice of the fixture list, have had an extra day to recover from their semi-final and will get another extra day to recover from this. But we are going to our hardest away game of the season where the home side are unbeaten over 80 games, with a weakened team.

Chelsea also have a lot to do to get to the Champions League Final and they are playing all their available stars. In the stand I listen to the roll call of their intimidating collection of mercenaries and contemplate no Evra, no Scholes, no Hargreaves, no Ronaldo, no Tevez in the starting line-up. We allege we are coming here to win yet we are playing with just Rooney up front.

We are at the back of the upper tier at the Shed End. The singing is good. Some of the men next to me have drunk enough by 12.45 to be having trouble standing in the aisles and they stagger forward causing a domino effect, all in fairly good nature. Out on the pitch all is not well. We see Wes Brown very nearly beat Van der Sar with an early back header, and United can hardly get the ball.

As in Barcelona, there appears to be no connection between the back of the team and the front; we are not relieving the pressure because we are not keeping the ball, we pass it about, then nobody makes a run and it goes back to Van der Sar who punts it upfield where we lose it again. We belt out all the current ditties; what else is there to do? We are not fifteen minutes into the game yet and already counting the minutes.

Then Drogba clashes with Vidic and leaves him on the floor with a bloody mouth. The sight of our big man being carried off on a stretcher is not a good one. Wes Brown moves infield and Hargreaves comes on at right back, thus restricting our ability to bring on the cavalry should it be needed.

I watch with envy as Drogba plays a superb first half for them, winning every aerial ball, flicking on ground passes and headers, every time to a blue shirt. It helps that like most of their team he is bigger than our lot. They look enormous. We have poor old Rooney jumping valiantly against giants for long punts and even when he wins it there is no-one for him to pass to.

They are pressing all over the field; Hargreaves, right in front of me, is constantly under threat, mainly from Kalou. He is good on the ball, but it prevents him doing anything other than occupying a small wedge of space near our corner flag. The central defence copes well with the threat but we are defending much too deep to survive, a fact illustrated when the ball breaks luckily to Joe Cole (who looks like a midget in this company) but he is able to snap in a dangerous shot which ricochets of the bar.

Just as I begin to think we will survive until half time disaster strikes. It’s Drogba. He makes his twentieth run at our defence, this time on our left, and when he crosses there is nobody on Ballack of all people, who does not even have to leap to bury a very competent header; 45 minutes 0-1. As the half time whistle blows it dawns on me that we are lucky to be only one down, it could be worse.

As the second half begins, it gets worse; Rooney holds his groin and starts limping. Then out of nothing Carvalho, whom I rate as one of their best, is given a most unwelcome surprise pass and delivers a shocking panic crossfield ball to Rooney who ignores the injury, outpaces Terry, goes dribbling across Petr Cech and scores from twelve yards out with a lovely reverse ground shot off the left hand post; 57 minutes 1-1.

Goals change games. Rooney has to go off but Ronaldo comes on and suddenly the season is ours again for the taking; Ferguson is a tactical genius after all. Ronaldo is literally wrestled to a standstill in the box by Ballack; but the refereeing team are all looking elsewhere. Anderson is producing thrusting runs, Giggs has a decent shot saved, Giggs and Nani exchange passes on the left and if only Giggs had anticipated the return there was a near post header there for him. Ronaldo is through with a lightning run only to be pulled up wrongly for offside.

Their defence is not that good; when we go at them we cause them serious problems. Perhaps we will bring Tevez on and finish the day in triumph. The board goes up, the substitution is coming and we look at each other in astonishment. He is replacing Anderson with O’Shea. Just when the momentum was building.

Still, the minutes tick by and we might, we just might, get away with it. Drogba takes a great free kick and Van der Sar pulls off a tremendous save. Then Drogba gets through; cries go up for a handball, Van der Sar saves again, phew!

But football is a cruel game. With time running out an unlucky bounce on the right wing, Essien loops in a cross and the other end of the ground erupts in a call for handball. The referee waves play on and the boos begin and then, horror of horrors, he points to the spot. Nobody at our end can see what happened. United players protest vehemently but he’s not going to change his mind again, is he?

The girl in front of me turns round and wants some comfort, some kind of physical contact with the hands, but what good is that? A gun with a telescopic sight might be of some use. Otherwise its in the lap of the gods now. Van der Sar walks forward, holds Ballack up, gets booked. Go right, Edwin, Ballack always shoots to his left. Edwin dives left. Ballack shoots very hard to Van der Sar’s right; 87 minutes 1-2.

Suddenly, reserves or not, United attack with abandon. When that happens I always wonder why we didn’t do it before it was too late. It is chaos in front of us, Nani’s superb pull-down, Ronaldo’s carefully placed shot, the hateful Ashley Cole is on the post to hack it clear. Then Carrick is floored in the area, it looks a clear penalty (it’s not) but the scramble continues, O’Shea gets in a header but Shevchenko is there this time to clear it off the line and, as Hughsie put it, we have run out of time.

International shopping village it might be, but young men outside are beginning to lower the tone. Football fans, lower the tone? Geriatric coward, I vote for avoiding Fulham Broadway and the traditional gauntlet of locals who roll well oiled out of the pubs and hurl abuse.

We walk in sullen anonymity down the Fulham Road and through West Brompton Cemetery where was buried Pocahontas and a Surgeon General who lived before Stamford Bridge was built with the glorious name of Cunter. Ghouls are picnicking in the place. Chelsea fans around us are going on about the best game they’ve seen all season but it doesn’t feel like that to me. Some tosser on a phone at West Brompton Station is telling his mate that Ashley Cole has Ronaldo in his pocket. No mate, he was on the bloody bench; that was the problem.

No matter how much Ferguson and Queiroz complain, I now know that Carrick handled the ball. He says he tried to move his arm, but it doesn’t really look that way, it’s just the kind of thing you say when you might have thrown away the season in one senseless moment. If it all turns to pig shit it won’t be Carrick’s fault anyway; these things happen. We’re looking at an isolated moment and blaming the referee when we might be examining our own tactics and selection.

I can see that legs have to be rested and that two Barcelonas and a Chelsea in a week is tough by any standards, perhaps there was no real choice. But to my simple mind we play without a real striker. We succeed because we have three great, running ball players who can interchange, interpass and destroy anyone. Sure, we have to rotate them, but the system does not work if two or more of them are on the bench. We talked all week about going and winning it on Saturday and we played in a negative, careful way. Half as many shots as Chelsea, just over 40% of possession.

The fates have deserted us in the last couple of weeks and if they’re against you there’s no hope. But you can appease them, you can at least invite them to help you. The season moves on to its climax and is still there for the taking. It’s just that with a little thing here, a little there, we could have been playing our big game on Tuesday and then resting everybody.

Now every single game is vital. I can’t be the only one who has a bad feeling about this. For those of us not playing, I think plenty of alcohol is probably the best solution.

Copyright © Paul James

Related Articles

Written by FredRed · Filed Under Match Zone 

Comments

Got something to say?





Bottom