An interesting take by Alan Gavurin on Chelsea’s complications with local rivalry…
Towards the end of the last, forgettable season, Chelsea Twitter was all a-quiver with arguments about who we would prefer to do better and, god-forbid, even win the league – Arsenal or Sp*rs.
Fortunately Leicester and Claudio, ably assisted, finally, by Eden Hazard, saved the day but it was touch and go for a while and we had to stare into the abyss of one or other of our deadly rivals actually winning the Premiership.
Team rivalry is a weird and wonderful thing. For me it is perhaps the most thrilling aspect of football – the schadenfreude we enjoy when Wayne Bridge scores the winner vs Arsenal in the Champions’ League, when Sp*rs self-destruct against us in their best chance of winning the league in decades and when Steven “this does not fucking slip” Gerrard slips with Liverpool playing us in a similar position.
However, Chelsea fans have a unique burden in that the teams we generally dislike the most are already occupied disliking other teams more than us. (I try to avoid using the word “hate” – football may be more important than life or death but there’s enough hatred in the world already isn’t there?) Try as we might, we will never squeeze in between Arsenal and Spurs, between Liverpool and Everton or between ManU and Citeh. And the teams who dislike us the most, Fulham and QPR are only worthy of our disdain but no more.
I’m ready to wager that if we polled Chelsea fans as to who we dislike the most the top three would be Arsenal, Sp*rs and Liverpool. Try as they might Jose and Pep will struggle to crack this top three.
So I was interested to understand what was going on last season, especially with regard to our London neighbours. Full declaration of interests here – my Grandad was a Sp*rs fan and I grew up going to Highbury almost as much as Stamford Bridge courtesy of an Uncle with season tickets. In those days (60s and 70s) I was devastated by the cup final defeat to Sp*rs, I hated Mackay, Gilzean and that they got our Greavsie and even the kit which I always thought was black and white – I guess it was on TV. But I also had the pleasure of watching the great Arsenal teams of the 70s although, in pre-Arsenal FanTV times, I was surrounded by the predecessors of Claude, Ty and co moaning that the team of Brady, Stapleton and O’Leary were “a load of rubbish” etc etc.
Fast forward to today and I think the whole Arsenal – Sp*rs dynamic as it impacts on Chelsea fans, has been re-set and it is almost totally down to one man – Arsene Wenger.
Sure his first seasons were a great success and we gained a true rival which we duly hauled down and surpassed from spring 2004 onwar
ds, starting with Claudio and Wayne’s Champion’s League quarter final victory but was then established in concrete by Jose.
My beef with Wenger is what he has done with Arsenal since his heyday (ie pre Spring 2004). What an appalling waste of talent and potential. What a
ridiculously stubborn refusal to change and adapt to the self-evident failings of the team.
The longer this has gone on the angrier I have become with Wenger even though I guess I should be pleased. We all want him to stay as their manager for ever. In fact he has snuck into my list of my most disliked people in the UK, appropriately enough in fourth place (behind, in order, Prince Andrew, Jeremy Corbyn and Liam Fox since you ask).
Meanwhile over at Tottenham, London’s latest regeneration area (!), two things have been happening – firstly a sense of pity for a team that just cannot shake off the hoodoo we have over them at Stamford Bridge and, even after their deserved win last week, who have only beat us five times in the Premiership era and, secondly, they actually have finally got a good, young manager playing attractive football and bringing young players through.
Up to last week, Arsenal and Sp*rs have shared a lack of ability to dig deep and conquer adversity when the going gets tough but, in Sp*rs case it is more from lack of experience and players with sufficient leadership (although they should be very worried if they can’t push on from where they got to last season) but in Arsenal’s case it is much more fundamental – part of their DNA as well as a feature of Wenger’s dreadful recruitment policy.
I know what @goalie59 means when he says he dreads every game against Sp*rs – I do too but that is because they might one day become a real rival if Poch stays there and they develop with their new stadium. As long as Wenger stays at Arsenal we have nothing to fear unless we are desperate to get to fourth place.
And in the meantime Spurs 5-3 win against us in 2015 led to Jose closing down the more expansive side of the team and helped deliver his third premiership. Ditto Arsenal’s 3-0 win against us last September. That led to the 3-4-3 which has got us 5 points clear after 20 games – we’d all take that. And all thanks to our lovely neighbours
What about Liverpool I hear you ask? That’s for a whole other blog.
Alan Gavurin @RootlessCosmo
