Chelsea 0 Leicester City 1 – Saturday 22nd December 2018 15:00
&
Watford 1 Chelsea 2 – Wednesday 26th December 2018 19:30
In the News: Just the half a dozen articles crowning the filthy Scouse champions at Xmas. United flew to Cardiff – are you serious? Not as serious as Sanchez – who reckons he won a £20k bet when Chequebook Pulis was given his marching orders. Equally as determined as they are to give the title to Klippity Klopp, the Press Plebs have labelled the Mancs world beaters now they are under the wily gaze of… Solskjaer. I appear to have missed the part where he became part of the elite. Sp*rs buried a time capsule under Wait Hart Lane to be opened in 2068. By which time they hope to have moved in. Badoom-tish. And headline of the week? “Married former Arsenal star Arshavin at centre of storm after leaving striptease club on a HORSE and “hugging two women.” Verily, a slow news day it must have been.
The Others: F*cking hell City. You have ONE JOB. And you lose to PALACE. Wait. Haven’t we got them next week?
Us: Should absolutely have been capable of winning this.
Them: Hang on. Where is Danny Drinkwater? Didn’t he play for them? I’d forgotten he existed. Does he still play for us?
Only took a minute for the systematic fouling on Hazard to begin, but joyfully they were very ropey at the back. Kasper needs to lay off the mince pies. He’s twice the size he was. In bright orange. Either that or Easyjet had made an emergency landing in the goal mouth. Anyway, they were defending very deep and all the possession was with us, but this did not make the game exciting. This was like dozing in front of A Wonderful Life after a full Xmas dinner rather than the latter stages of Die Hard. Which absolutely is a Xmas film.
We just couldn’t quite get our sh*t together at the last. First proper shot fell to Kovacic. Inevitable happened. He hit it like Mikel. Outstanding, sneaky little run from Kante, Luiz came agonisingly close from a corner to heading it in, a shot fell to Dave on 26 but it was well over. The ball dropped to Eden on the edge of the box, but he got a bit over excited and cracked the bar. They had the odd chance, forcing Kepa into a save on 41, but there were blocks going in all over the place as we tried to break the deadlock. Jorginho in particular kept a powerful effort driving low and goalward but it was parried by the Boeing 737 sitting in Leicester’s Goal. 76% possession. 10 shots, only two on target. – Must be more productive in the final third, she said in true pundit style, stating the f*cking obvious.
And then proceeded 45 of the most depressing minutes of football I have witnessed this season. Jorginho, Dave and Rudi all undone on their way to a goal for the away side. Utter smash and grab. Would be that horrible little sh*t Vardy as well. Neat, tidy, precise and clinical, none of which we were in front of goal. They cut through us like Sam Allardyce attacking a turkey dinner. With his hands.
At least this might serve as a kick up the a*se, I said.
The Beard. Now.
Loftus Cheek. Now.
Gin. Now.
To be fair we had flooded forward, and they had everyone except the cheating little rat in their own box, but it doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference if you can’t score a goal. The Beard and Loftus Cheek came on for Kovacic and Willian. Now all I need was the gin, and a lot of it.
Half an hour to go. Refwatch: Lee Probert. Winning no friends among the home support on account of not knowing what a foul was. Leicester slowed to a crawl, and yet Jorginho almost gave them a second. They were screaming for a handball from Dave as he slid in at the last to deny Vardy, who screamed the loudest about apparent cheating. That there was irony. It was turning out to be a dire day not only for football but for mankind with Palace three one up in Manchester.
Not a happy home crowd. Some desperate stuff going in at the Shed End to even stay in it.
Finally a corner for us with 20 mins to go. Dizzy heights indeed. Pleading with them to get forward now, but every endeavour seemed to break down with a shoddy, misplaced pass. It’s never a good sign when David Luiz is running about like a headless chicken in midfield. We wanted that one, killer ball forward, and so off jogged Jorginho for Cesc with 15 minutes to go.
Handbags in the box with Eden desperately trying to get it over the line, jubilation from Probert every time he blew the whistle in Leicester’s favour. This was nowhere near Die Hard. This had turned into sitting through Home Alone for the 300th time. What exactly did the dad do that he could afford to take an entire family of nine to Paris for Xmas? I reckon he was using them all as drug mules. There was a pound of crack waiting to be ingested by little Kevin in condoms somewhere in France.
Any collective support had descended into random obscenities being shouted out by frustrated fans who’d lost patience with our ineptitude. Ruben trying to back-heel the ball twenty yards when a Leicester player was in his way was not his finest hour and completely illustrative of how there was less plot on display than in any of the nine sequels to Home Alone that I was forced to sit through as a kid.
Ten minutes to go and we still looked like doing precisely nothing. Then suddenly we were in, it was there, and it hit the f*cking post. This was not our day. We were plunging into obscurity like Hans Gruber taking a swan dive off of Nakatomi Plaza.
So: I couldn’t blog the closing minutes. I was too busy trying to stem the flow of blood pouring from my eyeballs. Then I went and got drunk.
Watford 1 Chelsea 2
Wednesday 26th December 2018 19:30
And now it’s Boxing Day. Hurrah. You go from incessant running about like a c*nt and being exhausted to instant saturation from the world about three things.
1The need for you to buy more stuff in the sales after you’ve bankrupted yourself buying sh*t for people you mostly don’t like.
2The reminder that you’re fat and need a diet with all the slimming ads. I can see that
looking in the mirror. F*ck off.
3The reminder that the only thing society considers sadder than a fat person is a fat person with nobody to love them. Cue television suggesting I may need to pay to find men who find me attractive. So begineths the eHarmony free trial inundation, in which they try to convince you that a Chris Hemsworth lookalike is just a few cheaply constructed psychometric questions away from your grasp. As if you could ever have Chris Hemsworth for £19.99 a month. Unless it was the scraped together remains of him that were blown up in the Star Trek remake. Again, f*ck off. C*nts.
In the News: Don’t panic! Batshuayi is coming back to London! But only so we can loan him to Palace apparently. Rooney bitching that even the dinner ladies didn’t like CP. Even the warm ups are fun now, they reckon. He may be a loon, but the pantomime villain proportions now being dealt out to CP in retrospect are a bit f*cking cheeky. He’s not a nasty bloke. And at his worst the dinner ladies at Cobham still loved him. The idea that Fergie has swept in and delivered Solskjaer to them wrapped in tacky festive paper and tied up with a Xmas bow is a ridiculous narrative.
The Others: What a miserable f*cking day for football, nay humanity. The Red Scouse spurred into a romp by diving for a penalty; the atrocious line up on BT Score literally painting the walls with spunk every time they scored. Not to mention the runaway victory for Sp*rs, the only team with any momentum right now to save the planet from the interminable gloating, the sanctimonious f*cking lauding by not only themselves but the entire congregation of Press Plebs, and at least a years worth of having to listen to everyone tell us that it has been a victory for football if those horrible Scouse gits win the league. I would rather undergo having a f*cking colostomy bag fitted whilst fully conscious while the surgeon listens to an ABBA back catalogue than experience this. Because, City have deserted the good fight, it seems. They’ve basically gone awol at present and signed a little pussy peace treaty that has left the rest of civilisation clambering to ensure the future exclusion of smug Red Scouse c*ntery from the world of football. Thanks for nothing. You b*stards. Don’t make me come down there and revamp Bill Pullman”s speech from the original Independence Day.
But in the meantime our only salvation looks like coming from a team we want to win the league even less. Mowgli (special alias) just asked me which I would rather see with the trophy. I sh*t you not, at that exact moment I did a little girly half belch with my gob shut and some sick came up into my mouth. There’s your answer.
United coast to a win. You cheeky b*stards. Two goals for Pogba. Shameless. Dinner ladies are supposedly off their tits in the canteen. Thanks to some shambolic defending that looked, well like us at our most inept, at least the Goons dropped points, she wrote before we kicked off, knowing full well that if we didn’t get our sh*t together it didn’t mean a thing.
Our Game: I refused to go to this. On the basis that about now I’d be wandering round south Hertfordshire trying to find my way home with no public transport on a holiday all for the benefit of the Scouse television mafia who wanted to ruin Boxing Day for two teams by showing games all day and night. F*ck and Off.
Them: By no stretch of the imagination should this bunch of jobbers be able to beat us. But that didn’t stop them last season. Deeney appears to have spent the last few months on a desert island because he’s halved in size. Not that I’m at all bitter about his weight loss. He’ll be signing up for eHarmony next.
Us: A false nine. Against Watford. Provoked a distinct lack of f*cking Xmas joy in my world, I can tell you. Cheer me up Chelsea. Or else. If we don’t win this it will be almost as depressing as the counter next to the screen in the pub telling me that it is only 363 days, four and a half hours till Christmas.
Ben Foster – the worst time waster in the English game was at it after two minutes, but our first attempt came straight away with Pedro Pony (he’s been demoted again for now) launching a curling long range effort towards the cheating scumbag’s goal. 70% possession for us in the opening five, not that that has done us many favours of late. F*cking Carragher coating the commentary box with phlegm. More joy.
Nearly shot ourselves in the foot, but got away with it. Kovacic, who has been growing a beard, presumably so he can be distinguished from Hazard and actually get credit for some of his play, combined with Willian and they could have put us ahead straight after but the latter scuffed at it and it only made it as far as the post. Less fortunate was Kabasele, who ended up in considerable pain after a fight with the post. He tried to carry on, but nothing doing. Mariappa came on. He’s got more beard than head.
That knocked all momentum on its a*se, not that there was much anyway. So it was back to square one. No shots on target, not even a corner, and feeling quite smug about me and my throat infection bunking this one. Deeney’s weight loss doesn’t stop him from hitting the deck like a sack of f*cking bricks and pretending to have been hit in his still fat head. Kante was giving it some Xmas welly in the middle of the field, even dropping the odd back heel in, but nothing had actually ignited yet. It was like staring at one of the endless f*cking Xmas repeats of that northern Royle Family muck, while they fart and smoke, and waiting for someone to say something funny.
The world is still waiting.
Timely block from Jorginho on 26 minutes. Is that all we’ve had? Turgid would be overly polite at this stage. Pedro Pony put it across the face of goal straight after, but there was nobody there to meet it. As in a striker. I was more entertained by the Gooner who had just walked in the Old Bank dressed like an homage to Dick Van Dyke. Complete with mockney accent.
Watford had the best opportunity yet to take the lead on 31, but the final shot was pretty diabolical. Think Jonny Wilkinson after a dozen jäger bombs. Hazard was in on goal thirty seconds later, but it got away from him, and then commenced a lot of L’Arse like faffing on the edge of the box which resulted in nothing. By 36 we’d fully broken out into a light jog, punctured by occasional bursts of more exhilarating activity . Sadly we still almost conceded. We’ve got T-1000 Luiz today as opposed to the T-100 version.
Nearly a minute for a throw in from one yellow person on 40. Yawn. Pedro Pony was almost in straight away but the defender put in a crucial tackle after Eden had wound his way up the pitch. The subsequent almost display of arse cheek from the Spaniard was the highlight of the game so far. Then he went off, forcing Sarri to bring on Hudson-Odoi.
Eden you beautiful, sexual little beast. Capoue f*cked up, Kovacic leapt in. Eden only had the keeper and three defenders to deal with. Easy. Peasants. 0-1. Not that that means anything for us. If we survive five minutes I’ll be amazed, said I. Kepa diced with death by throwing himself in front of the lumbering oaf that is Deeney to block one equaliser, but he couldn’t stop some little wanker with short sleeves and gloves seconds later. Back to square one. For the third time. We lasted about two minutes.
Wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to the end of halftime without declaring a war of mockery on Dick Van Dyke and his oversized flat cap, hipster knotted tie, albino attempt at stubble, his size 13-14 boys shirt over his jumper and his newfound habit of cheering for Watford. F*ck off. You just drew with Brighton. Even we beat Brighton. C*nt. It’s either him or the sad f*cker who sat himself uninvited at our table and managed to make two mouthfuls of Stella last 45 minutes. But to be fair he only bought it on the half hour mark after we took the piss out of him for lurking in the doorway like an unwanted ginger stepchild.
One mouthful he managed during the break. Less impetus than us immediately after the restart. This was a blessed brief spell, almost as brief as the respite from the loud pontifications of DVD who was telling the whole pub what is wrong with Chelsea. It was like Trump lecturing Weinstein on gender equality.
Still dominating possession, still not scoring goals. Looking more likely to concede than go ahead again. Delofeu tried to get a penalty. He was raised at Farca, but that’s still no excuse for being a cheating c*nt. Didn’t stop Salah earlier on tho. Home fans relentlessly booing Luiz now. Yawn. Alonso was robbed on the left on 55, but Watford couldn’t make anything of it. Hazard punched in the chest by Foster in the box. So he can shift when he wants to. Penalty. Eden sent Foster the wrong way. Karma. 1-2. Have that you whining yellow gits.
I feel slightly less angry now.
In fact if there are seven more corners and my bet comes in I may consider putting a £19.99 deposit down on Chris Hemsworth. There was still more than half a pint of Stella left by the way. I was half dead and I’d drunk more than him.
Now it was our turn to take our time. Do I feel any guilt? Not even a flicker on my Giveaf*ckometer. CHO was still having a go down the right hand side, Willian was a flea’s cock away from making us comfortable on 72, but Watford hadn’t given up. Luiz baffles me at the moment. Even more so than usual he goes from the sublime to the ridiculous and he just wanders about combing his ever growing bonce behind his ears and looking as exhausted as Sam Allardyce after he’s finished attacking a fridge for Xmas leftovers and collapsed in a heap covered in sausage roll pastry flakes and chunks of turkey. He’s gone from HMS Pinafore Sideshow Bob to depressed convict Sideshow Bob.
Kante went on a rampant expedition up the field to meet a perfectly weighted pass on 78 but his shot was wide, Deeney had a chance to level again less than a minute later but thankfully his impression of Eden Hazard side-footing the ball into the net looked more like Jonny Wilkinson after a dozen jäger bombs and a blow to the head.
Barkley on for Kovacic. I’d bring on Giroud to kill it, says Mowgli. Idiot, says I, Barkley’s supposed to shore up the midfield. He’s a bank manager, what does he know, says Mowgli, I’ve been going Chelsea for years. Yes. Says I, and never once have you been sober.
There wasn’t even a false nine about it now, literally nobody staying up, because Watford have seen how well we capitulate and were still searching for a share of the points. Fans not impressed by CHO being replaced with Emerson, but he wasn’t looking particularly comfortable as he jogged off.
Hazard still taking the piss on 85, manipulating a corner. Jorginho of all people was hitting them from range. Sarri devastated to see his love child’s effort just skin the bar. Four minutes to survive our own idiocy, but we did a good job of keeping it in their half. Sting seemed to have gone out of the Hornets’ tail now. Mwhahaha. See what I did there.
Refwatch: Atkinson. Gave us a penalty and not them. What a nice bloke. How rare it is that you can’t think of a reason to call the referee a c*nt.
Corner for Watford with a minute to go. Ben Foster actually broke into a jog to go up. When he did it was laughable, and then he was marooned at the wrong end of the pitch. Kante could have had a go at an empty goal from the halfway line but the poor little chap panicked and started running sideways.
So: Eden has now scored more than 100 goals for Chelsea. More importantly than that, if you follow my Twitter you’ll know that he changed a homeless little boy’s life this week. It’s now only 363 days, two hours and 32 minutes until Xmas. I’m going home to take a lot of drugs. Legal ones, for the benefit of the Daily Mail.
AC
