The Official Thread of Chelsea FC

Started by Norf Tyrone, January 23, 2007, 11:16:58 PM

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Norf Tyrone

Ok. At last. I've started it. I am sure before long the Mancs, Goons and the Scousers would've told me to p**s off and stop gate crashing their thread.

So why tonight? Why not.

A great night for Chelsea as they book their place in the 2007 CC Final on the last Sunday of February. Only Wycombe I hear you ask. Maybe so, but for a fan of many, many lows, I am still enjoying the too few highs. This will only be the 8th Cup final of my lifetime (4 FA Cups, 1 ECWC, 3 LCups), what is actually more than I thought before I started to type.

A decent performance, against a spirited Wycombe side who attempted to play football, and avoided playing the all-too-obvious 6 at the back. Yer man Doherty from this very island, was there best player, bar the mistake for the first goal.

MOTM was Shevchenko. At last he got the goals his work rate deserves. As Jose calls it, goals are goals, but it doesn't matter if it is Barcelona or Wycombe the hard work will always be hard work. In addition Jon-Obi Mikel continues t develop with every game. Again tonight he kept it really simple, opened the game, and put in a challenge when required. With Cech showing no ill effects from his injury, and the hopeful return of JT...things are still boiling nicely. The team looked unified tonight, and even Jose cracked a smile.

Roll on Cardiff.....

http://www.dailymotion.com/FootballHeaven/video/x11ro8_chelsea-4-0-wycombe Lamps 4-0

http://www.dailymotion.com/FootballHeaven/video/x11rhj_chelsea-3-0-wycombe Lamps 3-0

http://www.dailymotion.com/FootballHeaven/video/x11r0p_chelsea-2-0-wycombe Sheva 2-0

http://www.dailymotion.com/FootballHeaven/video/x11rw2_chelsea-vs-wycombe-goals Sheva 1-0!!
Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone

Norf Tyrone

A fairly underpopulated thread, but it has to be done. Was out of the country for a few days there so never got a chance to post recently.

Decent win last night for The Blues. Another step towards the consistency of the last 2 seasons. Away to Charlton on Saturday, and hopefully a win, which will put a bit of P on United who have a trickyish visit to the Lane on Sunday.

In addition I hope you all gasped in amazement at Scott Sinclair's goal on Saturday. Sinclair is a 17yo striker from the Chelsea reserves. He, along with Sahar, Woods, Jack Cork amongst others have been tipped for the top. Will they get the chance that's another question.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sb1H6p7yn30
Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone

Dinny Breen

For what it's worth I think Chelsea will over-haul Man U. Can't see Jose giving youth a chance, he's under too much pressure..
#newbridgeornowhere

An Fear Rua

This thread looks like a chelsea crowd mid 90s ....
Its Grim up North

Over the Bar

QuoteThis thread looks like a chelsea crowd mid 90s ....

psst... wanna join Combat18??

Armagh Cúchulainns

Great`we're getting Terry back and Boulahrouz and what happens? Ashley Cole suspected ligaments

Heres a good quiz question,

What match this year have Chelsea had their strongest starting 11 playing?

Same question for Man U, Arsenal and Pool
Its all about the Hurling.

Spiritof98

Surely a strongest 11 is defined only by Opinion?
I'll go back if Marsdens back

Armagh Cúchulainns

#7
Well, yes opinion based it would be but the best starting 11 would usually start the harder matches and rest in the weaker matches.

Starting 11 or Chelsea.

Cech                                                                Cech
Boulahrouz Terry Carvalho Cole                            Boulahrouz Terry Carvalho
Cole Makelele Lampard Robben                            Cole Makelele Essien Lampard Robben
Drogba Shevchenko.                                         Drogba Shevchenko.

But by this team Joe Cole has been hindered by injuries
Cech is only returning after a spell out
Boulahrouz hasnt returned since injury
Terry due back shortly after injury spell
A Cole is now out injured
Robben has had a share of injuries
Sheva is still making adjustments but wait. Patience is a virtue.


In generalisation injuries have hit Chelsea quite badly this year in relation to Man U, if the tables where turned would Man U have the strength to maintain a top four spot, i think not.

Well at least our injuries havent been like Newcastles, touch wood.
Its all about the Hurling.

Spiritof98

#8
So Essien wouldn't figure, come on! he probably the best player (ex drogba),

It was only September when Mourinho was claiming that Chelsea should have team in the Chamionship and that their reserves would win the league, now after a few injuries, he starts to cry about having to use youth team players.
I'll go back if Marsdens back

Norf Tyrone

QuoteCan't see Jose giving youth a chance, he's under too much pressure..

Agreed probably. Chelsea have some fine (By all reports) prospects coming through, but I dunno if Jose will use them at any stage. The lad he has most faith in is 16 year old Michael Woods whom he is always asking to join in with senior training. I've suspected that this is the source of the alledged fall out. Chelsea have always maintained that there policy will be to be self sufficent in a few years time. They have aggressively gone after the finest 14-16 yo players in the world over the last 18 months, and I think they are looking for a plan to integrate them. I don't think TSO is totally bought in...that's my theory anyhow.

QuoteThis thread looks like a chelsea crowd mid 90s ....
But nothing like our trophy cabinet over the last few years :-)

And my Chelsea XI if I could...


Cech
Geremi although I think we have 3/4 ok right backs, but lack one great one.
Terry
Carvalho
Bridge as I prefer him to Cole
Maka
Essien
Lampard
Joe Cole
Drogba
Shevchenko however I think Andriy would benefit from a flat midfield 4 that must contain two wide men (Cole and Robben), and two midfielders. Lampard and Essien must play, which leaves no space for Makalele.
Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone

Norf Tyrone

Injury curse strikes again. No sooner have Chelsea got JT back, and Ashley Cole is injured for what looks like 2-3 months. Still I wasn't too worried, as Bridge is more than capable cover...but now he is out injured too for up to a month!

Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone

Norf Tyrone

Chelsea's critics guilty of switching from the historical to the hysterical
Martin Samuel


Whenever Liverpool play Chelsea, the fans sing a song about history. Chelsea have none, apparently, whereas Liverpool, with five European Cups and 18 league titles, have an abundance.

This is not strictly true, of course. What Liverpool's 23 trophies represent is achievement; history is just stuff that has happened, good, bad or indifferent. Every football club has history, even Milton Keynes Dons, and certainly one such as Chelsea that dates back more than a century.

Chelsea won a European trophy two years earlier than Liverpool and beat them to the League Cup by 16 years. They have produced an England captain, John Terry, while postwar England captains from Anfield have either been bought in, such as Emlyn Hughes and Kevin Keegan, or in the case of home-grown internationals such as Phil Thompson and Steven Gerrard, have received the accolade only temporarily as a result of injury. Also, Chelsea fought a battle for their very existence when developers wanted to turn their Stamford Bridge home into luxury flats.

There is history in London SW6 all right; what Chelsea lack in comparison with Liverpool is sustained success. Liverpool claimed the league title more than half a century before Chelsea and subsequently won it more than any other club. They lead 5-0 on European Cup victories, 7-3 on FA Cup wins. Within the record books, Liverpool's status as the heavyweight champions of English football is undisputed; why worry?

Simple. Chelsea make the Kop hot under its collar because their recent success represents a challenge to the established order. The defence mechanism is to crow about history as if Roman Abramovich and José Mourinho cannot be part of it; as if Kenny Dalglish was not also an expensive import to an already successful club, much the same as Andriy Shevchenko; as if it would be possible for a business to use anything but its bank balance to meet the challenge laid down by Liverpool and their G14 allies, and the privilege and self-interest they represent.

The same emotion came to the fore when Lucas Neill chose West Ham United over Liverpool. It was as if the new money had no right to be at the same table. Yes, maybe Neill did go south for the wrong reasons — certainly West Ham have got about as much from their spending spree as Robert P. McCulloch, the American entrepreneur who in April 1968 paid $2.46 million for London Bridge, supposedly in the belief he was getting the one with the towers. Yet either way there was an awfully arrogant presumption on Merseyside, where it was treated as heresy that Neill should not respond to a click of the fingers, as if the hierarchy of English football should never be subject to change.

Arsene Wenger was at it, too, this week, denouncing a system that allows Chelsea to thrive with operating losses of £80 million, while pretending the structure of high-end European football is not the root cause of this problem. Those who despise Chelsea invariably fail to answer one basic question: how else are a team meant to break into the cosy club that is the Champions League, and remain there, without spending beyond their means?

There are occasional interlopers, such as Celta Vigo, of Spain, but they do not last without sustained investment. The Champions League is set up selfishly to maintain the needs of a tiny elite — that, fortunately for Wenger, includes Arsenal, despite their limited success in European competition (two trophies, 24 years apart, since entering the Fairs Cup in 1963) — and the only way around that is for an emerging club to plunge into debt in the hope their gamble brings reward. Some try and fail, such as Leeds United; others, such as Chelsea, are insured against financial oblivion by the wealth and ambition of their owner.

The parvenu nature of Chelsea's arrival makes the G14 cabal resentful and good old-fashioned jealousy does the rest, but to bleat on about fairness or even history misses the point. What is better for football: that Liverpool win a sixth European Cup, or Chelsea win a first? And, if not Chelsea, then who would we like to see at the top table? Blackburn Rovers? Bolton Wanderers? An efficiently run small club, punching pluckily above their weight? Oh, please.

Wenger's regard for lesser teams was demonstrated on Saturday when Blackburn earned a hard-fought if unappealing draw at the Emirates Stadium in the FA Cup fifth round. Did Wenger congratulate Mark Hughes, the Blackburn manager, that with a fraction of Arsenal's resources and some of his best players missing, against a team with some of the finest technical footballers in the world, he had conjured a stifling stalemate and reduced Arsenal to a handful of attempts on goal? No, he called for replays to be abolished because they interfered with his Champions League schedule, not to mention Arsenal's bold and fascinating assault on third place.

If Wenger had his way, Blackburn's reward for holding firm for 90 minutes away from home would be to play another 30 minutes at Arsenal's ground and then, if necessary, take penalties before a partisan home crowd. Sounds fair.

Wenger did not suggest that if a single encounter was to decide Cup ties, perhaps a seeding system could operate so that the higher-positioned side on the day of the draw always played away. Nor did he advance the reappraisal of wealth distribution to compensate smaller clubs for loss of earnings, FA Cup revenue clearly being of more importance to those denied the lucrative drip-drip of endless European group games. In fact, Wenger made no attempt to see beyond Arsenal's point of view at all. Noticeably, he is no advocate of settling Champions League fixtures in such a slapdash manner.

He is not alone in this self-absorption. When pushed, he admitted he would not necessarily practise what he preaches given the same opportunity as Chelsea, conceding that Arsenal would have welcomed Abramovich's millions, too. When tested, very few pass football's morality test. The Liverpool supporters who mocked Chelsea's Russian revolution were not so negatively vocal about the arrival of George Gillett Jr and Tom Hicks, the new American owners, despite some awkward references to franchises and Liverpool Reds at the press conference. Even Manchester United diehards, while still paying lip-service to the antiGlazer movement, have been forced to admit that the impact on the club has been minimal. Same manager, improved squad, better league position, what is not to like?

Yes, it would be lovely if all clubs could be run by the local pork butcher with a lifetime of devotion to the cause and a shrine to some bygone wing half in his office above the shop, but in times when the game makes millionaires in months, not even years, that is not going to happen. History will be written, in part, by gatecrashers from Siberia and if your club are lucky enough to find one that wants to give your best player 100 grand a week, why argue?

So much of the antipathy towards Chelsea is hypocritical anyway. Wenger rightly questioned the connection between Chelsea and PSV Eindhoven, but what of Arsenal's links to Beveren, the Belgian team? "There is one difference — they do not play in the Champions League," he said. The follow-up question surely concerned when Wenger had first been aware of his ability to forecast the future.

Right now, it must be said, Beveren show no signs of Champions League potential, lying third from bottom in the Jupiler League. They have, however, competed in the European Cup and Cup Winners' Cup twice each, the Uefa Cup on four occasions, and reached the Belgian Cup final as recently as 2004.

The cooperation agreement with Arsenal lasted from 2001 to July 1, 2006 and was considered complex enough to warrant investigation by the FA and Fifa. It was alleged that a loan of €1.5 million (about £1.007 million) from Arsenal to a company called Goal had helped to secure Beveren's financial position, representing a breach of club ownership regulation. Arsenal claimed that this was an interest-free loan that had no impact on club administration and the FA and Fifa absolved all parties.

Less satisfactory was Beveren's status as a glorified clearing house for the youth academy founded by the former manager, Jean-Marc Guillou, in Abidjan. The squad contained a majority of players from the Ivory Coast (and still does) who take advantage of Belgium's loose work-permit regulations to find a shop window in Europe.

A recent graduate is the Arsenal right back, Emmanuel Eboué. So while Chelsea's links with PSV deserve exploration, they have not been alone in requiring the attention of football's lawmakers. Yet what is this — all of it, positive and negative — if not history? Arsenal's Ivorian production line, Liverpool's proposed move from Anfield under the auspices of their new owners, the Russian who transformed Chelsea and English football, almost on a whim. Even the theft of Wimbledon FC by an opportunist from 80 miles north will one day be part of football folklore. While stick-in-the-muds such as the one on this page are still spitting out the words Franchise FC, a new generation of supporters in Milton Keynes will be drawing on our disdain to fuel their identity, in a no-one-likes-us-we-don't-care kind of way.

No, it is not 18 league titles and five European Cups, but that was never just history anyway. That was genius. And, for the moment at least, Chelsea, Arsenal, MK Dons and the rest are a long way from there.


[url][http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/martin_samuel/article1415316.ece/url]
Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone

Norf Tyrone

Decent result for the Blues tonight. To be honest Porto were average enough, and if Chelsea have of went after them more in the 2nd half we'd have won that one.

Top class display again by Percy Carvalho, Essien, Bridge, and young Diarra. Diarra playing only his 3rd or 4th game at right back restricted so-called danger man Quarasma (spelling) to one long range effort all night. Speaking of Quaresma (Spelling again), people slag Ronaldo, Drogba etc. but I never seen one inididual dive as much as he did tonight. To be fair the ref rarely fell for it, but probably should've booked him at some stage.

Shevchenko had another pretty good game, but was starved of posession. The number 7 took his goal really, really well.

The big down side tonight, another injury for JT who went off after 8 mintues with an ankle injury. The special  one made a wee mistake here, by delaying the sub until 12 minutes where by that stage Porto had scored. However he redeemed himself by immediately telling Obi Mikel, who was stripped off, to sit down, and sent Robben on. A fine Roben run sending Sheva away for the goal.
However Robben's lack of preperation saw him go off injured at HT. Both JT and Robben unlikely to make the CC final on Sunday.

Rating:
Cech 6
Diarra 8
JT (NLEFA)
Essien 8.5
Carvalho 9
Bridge 7.6
Maka 6
Lampard 5
Ballack 4 (!)
Sheva 7.5
Drogba 5

Subs
Robben 7
Obi Mikel 6
Kalou (NLEFA)


BTW....I have had a feeling for weeks that Sheva will get the winning goal this Sunday. Back in 2005, Kezman had failed to ignite at the Bridge yet scored in the CC final. I have a feeling for the Ukranian on Sunday too. Check out his price at the Bookies...
Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone

Armagh Cúchulainns

Good win yesterday, hopefully steers the team toward other silverware this year. Thought Carvalho in 1st half was excellent and introduction of Robben was masterclass.
Although imo this game really showed who will be top in england in the next ten years, Arsenal have some great youth players coming through unlike ourselves :'(


Its all about the Hurling.

Norf Tyrone

My head hurts  :'(

Long day yesterday, but a thoroughly enjoyable one. Arsenal def impressed more than I thought they would, and could've been more than 1 up early on. Thought Percy, Cech and Drogba were outstanding, with the ill Lampard plus Ballack (Again!) poor.

Can't understand why Wenger continues to expose Senderos to Drogba, every time he gets caned.

JT...mister indestructable again! Credit to Gary Lewin and the Arsenal players for their reaction.

The brawl was somethnig and nothing. However I cannot see what Mikel does to justify a red card? I think Eboue will get one in retrospect.

QuoteArsenal have some great youth players coming through unlike ourselves
Wrong. Chelsea do have great youth players, Sinclair, Sahar, Diarra, Mikel, Robben, Woods, Stoch, Manciene etc etc. Six of those have played for the first team this season. Now will people like Sinclair, and Woods get the chance for extended first team runs? That's another question, but if Chelsea want to get their self sufficency target for 2010, they'll have to.
Owen Roe O'Neills GAC, Leckpatrick, Tyrone