Chelsea 2 Rottenham 2
Pre-Season Not-so-friendly
Wednesday 4th August 2021, 19:45
Transfer News: Romelu Lukaku has apparently asked Inter to accept the offer. There appear to be back up options, but honestly, the initial bid of £85m plus Marcos Alonso was overly generous. There is a surcharge on this for our own idiocy. Never let it be said that we are not humble enough to willingly walk around for the duration of this contract with egg on our faces. Jack Grealish to have a medical at Man City, with Danny Ings set to go in at Aston Villa. Sp*rs still clinging to Harry Kane by their fingernails. With the result that he’s just refusing to leave Florida. Apparently he’s not even had a conversation with Nuno. Although this could just be because the telephone is beyond him.
Tonight’s Game: Its been so long it took me 45 minutes of tantrums and swearing to get into my Weebly account. I’m about as ready for this as the stadium is with the Matthew Harding in bits and people running from stand to stand claiming any empty seat they could find. It’s been that long since we were there, that not only had the wifi forgotten me, but when it asked why I was at the Bridge “to see a match” was not even an option. I also recognise nobody. I don’t know whether or not this is because of time elapsed or because half our fans are still hiding behind lockdown beards.
Pretty decent line up minus the players who went all the way in the Euros. Lovely to see Trevor Chalobah on the line up. If not only for the novelty value of him being the only person named Trevor in Britain since 1969. They were facing mid-table opposition from the yuck side of the river for the second time in a week. The meme fun a few weeks ago was about whether the entire population would be offered a Covid jab or the Sp*rs job first. Poor Nuno, who evidently drew the short straw, brought an acceptable side but a few of them looked like they’d been hitting the burgers over the summer. I mean Eric ‘Dire’ Dier was heaving like a beached whale midway through the first half.
I out did him and brought wonderful Americans for their first experience of football in England. My explanation of Sp*rs: They’re horrible and nobody likes them. They are the Clemson of the Premier League. They were muchly impressed by our consistency and diversity in smack-talking the opposition. This began with many choruses of “Harry Kane, he knows that you’re sh*t”. Followed by “Dele is a wanker.” This, I informed them was factually correct in every way.
Massive reception for Kai Havertz was completely unsurprising. So was the fact that you could kit yourself out with a different outfit for a week in the club shop with the commentary for his goal scrawled on it. But after we basically hammered them for the opening spell it was Hakim Ziyech who gleefully opening the scoring after a quarter of an hour. N’Golo Kante was his usually awesome self winning the ball back, and Timo Werner did a great job of drawing off the defender. The rest of their mob backed off like he was wielding a positive PCR test, so that the Moroccan could smash it home into the corner with pretty much no interference at all.
Dominant is an understatement. Hakim could have had another straight away. It was like watching that man mountain Caeleb Dressel bloke in a swim off against Sam Allardyce. Fans amused themselves no end with “is that all you take away” sung at their three substitutes warming up. We were ole-ing on 24 minutes. Americans loving the simplicity and clarity of “you’re f*cking sh*t.” I didn’t even recognise Dele Alli. He looks half a stone overweight and was totally trashed after 25 minutes. He looked like Boris Johnson after a rampant shagfest with his missus. (Incidentally his hyper fertility and just the thought of anyone letting him wave it near them makes me gag. God help the domestic staff at Downing Street hearing those sound effects).
Maybe he should stick to his amateur porn. Alli, not Johnson. Nobody needs to see that sex face. Maybe Dele just couldn’t manoeuvre in a kit three sizes too big for him. Or maybe it’s that he was weighed down by his MN8 mid-90s tribute hair. (Youtube. “I’ve got a little something for you”. Now.) OR maybe he’s caught sight in the mirror of the fact that he now possesses the worst tattoo sleeve in the history of football and was just ashamed.
Mind you neither self of Spawn appear to be match fit either. Both had to have a sit down on half an hour. I’d had one rum and coke and half an unwanted Aperol spritz and appeared to be completely wankered. Favourite song tonight: “Oh Tommy Tuchel you are the love of my life, Oh Tommy Tuchel, I’d let you shag my wife, Oh Tommy Tuchel, I hate PSG too.
1-0 it was at the break. Should have been more, but they were not even in contention. They look to be significantly behind us in terms of match fitness. The superlative Captain Kante departed, along with Callum Hudson-Odoi to give Christian Pulisic and Timoue Bakayoko a run out. Hapless spud twats squandered a chance as soon as we began again after the break. Trevor had to bail us out at the back, and a beast like tackle by Kurt Zouma was needed, but they still hadn’t equalised. Mateo Kovacic bossed the pitch from the middle, and they were still second best, even with the odd bit of misplaced optimism.
Then Ziyech slapped them in the face with a second. Big grin on his face. Annoyingly they then scored. Sheer luck was the only way they were getting off the mark. Gits. We could have nailed it on 61 with a load of pinball in the box, another miss on 65. Dammit. By this point Tommy had made another seven changes and the contest as an indicator of what is to come this season was over in favour of having a look at people and driving up fitness levels. Which is why they then scored what was a ludicrous goal from our perspective.
I know we’ve all been denied the match-going experience for a while, but the levels of anger were quite amusing. One guy stormed out at this point. Let’s be clear: we were watching Chelsea’s answer to the Raggy Dolls. Eleven players who have never played together as a team in their lives and never will again. Who last season were playing variously for Granada, Porto’s B team, Genoa, Sheffield United, Anderlecht and FULHAM. Let’s get a grip people. Personally devastated not to see the lesser spotted Danny Drinkwater. Presumably two games in a week after getting paid to do nothing for so long would have ended him. That or his liver has given out. I literally never thought I’d see some of these players again. I thought we’d sold Bakayoko. Likewise Davide Zappacosta. Kenedy must be the inspiration for that new M. Night Shyamalan film because he looks middle aged. Matt Miazga. Wow.
Off the line by Ethan Ampadu on 77. Pulisic blazed one over the bar and Carolyn says “I apologise for my country”. Spawn and I appeared to be bereft of an attention span by this point. Were games always this long? First silverware of the season? Is this thing even over? That’s assuming this warrants a trophy and not just a bumper bag of skittles. Roll on Palace.
AC
