Murray Scores

By Gary Watton
December 7 2015

Oh first things first, one must be chivalrous enough to pay tribute to our conquerors. Bournemouth, like Palace and others, have simply taken a leaf out of our dubious manual and defended well and mugged us with a goal from a rare attack, after soaking up what might be loosely referred to as 'pressure'. Now what team has specialised in such a strategy in the past?! Ah yes, we taught them everything they know. Now the pupils have upstaged the teacher yet again this term.

Now the thing is I can recall in the 1992-3 season, media types asking are Nottingham Forest under the great Brian Clough too good to go down. Well, they did fall through the relegation trapdoor. Similarly in the seventies, ManUre, Tottensham, and of course ourselves put our glory years of the sixties behind us and demonstrated that you're not too good to go down. The question that might be worth pondering is: are the current muppets too good to go down? Answer: no. However, their one saving grace is that there are four or five teams in the league who are even worse than our impotent bunch, namely the two north-east clubs, Villa, Norwich, and possibly West Brom.

Anyhow, here is my latest anti-Mourinho rant, so brace yourselves pop pickers:

Mourinho is killing this club. He talks foolishly about his 'philosophy' as if he is some university professor. Well, his so-called philosophy is to have too many people behind the ball and few bodies in the box. Why? He and his team are scared of losing possession and they are utterly terrified of conceding a goal. When you are so frightened of conceding, you play with fear and rarely look like scoring yourselves. Of course, there is the inevitable abusive chorus about how critics of Jose, like myself, are "plastic". Well, I yearn for the 1997-8 season, long before Roman and Jose appeared. We lost plenty, should have won the league with the quality that we had, but by Jove when we got it right we tore teams apart. We whipped Tottensham 6-1 at their place and stuffed Palace 6-2 and Tromso 7-1. We came back from the dead to overcome Arsenil over two legs in the league cup semi and trounced Liverfools 4-1. We played sexy football. We are now playing Ann Widdicombe football. I even yearn for the days when limited players like Fillery, Langley, and Walker played out of their skins and we scored plenty, even if we conceded plenty too. Mourinho, like Wenger, will never change his ways. I much prefer the Keegan 'philosophy' (that pretentious word again) of stuff it if we concede a goal, because we're going to score three or four anyway. It's no use anyone blaming Eva Carneiro. Our lack of form has got nothing whatsoever to do with her dismissal. It's wrong to talk of our late return from the summer break. If we were one or two weeks late, we would be playing catch-up for one or two weeks. We are however still playing catch-up four months later. So much for that erroneous theory. 

As for the playing staff, Pedro is another Cuadrado and certainly not an improvement upon the sorely missed Schurrle. Oscar is a fancy Dan and not suited to our current predicament. Mikel is a one-trick pony and Ramires is clumsy. Oh and Willian's delivery from corners is indeed rubbish and he's supposedly our best player!

We now have the small matter of a visit from FC Porto on Wednesday evening. However, we do tend to play better against better teams, and are less clueless than we are against mediocre teams like Bournemouth still are. The trouble is that we only need a draw to qualify for the last sixteen, so guess which team might be playing with fear, clinging on to a draw? Answers on a postcard.

CHELSEA 0 Bournemouth 1; half time: 0-0.

CHELSEA team: Courtois; Rahman; Ivanovic; Zouma; Cahill; Matic; Hazard; Fabregas; Pedro; Willian; Oscar. Used substitutes: Costa; Remy; Traore.

CHELSEA LEADING SCORERS:

Willian six goals

Costa four goals

Oscar three goals

Ramires three goals

Cahill two goals

Pedro two goals

Remy two goals

Zouma two goals

Bad To Worse

Discussion started by Chelsea FC (IP Logged), 07/12/2015 14:08

Chelsea FC
07/12/2015 14:08

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