(I Don't Want to Go to) Chelsea

{yes I know they were away this weekend, just go with it}

Last season, and indeed for some of the season before that, I found myself in the weird position of liking Chelsea. I mean, I didn’t really like them, but I liked them! They were my beloved clowns, always ready to do something ridiculous or outlandish. They were also involved in two of my favourite games of last season, and both within the same week, the 1-4 nonsense against Spurs on MNF and the 4-4 thriller against City on Super Sunday.

This year however they seem to be good? They’re second in the table? I know we’ve seen them dominate the league before, but not this Chelsea, not recently. They can’t actually be good, can they?

And after a disappointing and frustrating draw to Fulham (Martinelli I hope you have nightmares about being offside) by my boys, it was with a whole heap of conflicting emotions that I went into the big ticket game of Super Sunday: Tottenham Hotspur v. Chelsea.

A Spurs win would leave us precariously in second, with Chelsea just a point behind. But also, it would be a Spurs win. But a Chelsea win would put them firmly in second, by two points. But it would be a Spurs loss, which, y’know, is always funny.

Given Spurs’ position in the table at the moment (11th, I can’t remember where they were before the game, but around the same) I begrudgingly plumped for wanting them to win. If they won then yes, it’d be Spurs winning, but also, a win for them wouldn’t mean they were suddenly on our tail or looking better than us, it would simply be a favour from our cousins in N17.

It started well. Cucurella forgot which job he was working and entered the pitch in his clown shoes, slipping over twice in quick succession, each time leading to a Spurs goal, the first for Solanke, the second a beautiful strike from Kulusevski. Maybe it was going to work out for us over in N5 after all. Sure, it would mean a Spurs win but they’d have to live with helping our title challenge, but also they’d have just beaten the dreaded Chelsea. Maybe all of North London was about to be happy?

Enter Jadon Sancho with a pure wallop of the ball that rattled the goal and made a lovely noise to get one back. All this with only 17 minutes having been played.

Things continued at a fast and furious pace, then it was half time, and then I kinda, maybe, might have fallen asleep for a bit. But my sources (the constantly open tab of the Premier League table which I then click into specific games from) tell me that Palmer got a penalty to gain parity and then, I think maybe I opened my eyes for this? I genuinely can’t remember, Enzo Fernandez put Chelsea ahead.

Additional clumsiness gave way to another penalty which Palmer again put away with aplomb, before finally, and I was definitely dozing for this because I was very confused when I woke up, Son got another consolation goal to make the final score 3-4.

Which of course left all of North London frustrated and annoyed. Rumours began to circulate about whether Ange could last much longer, and of course many people QTd my tweet about it with reference to Ange and Den, festively appropriate!

But what of the rest of the weekend? We seem to be in something of a…goalden age right now. The past two weeks have seen a flurry of them, banging in from all avenues and this weekend was no exception.

With Liverpool being too cowardly to deal with a little bit of wind, it was a derbyless weekend that started instead with the 3pm games.

Villa let the side down a little by only beating Southampton 1-0. With Southampton being the way they are this season I think pretty much everyone was expecting a drubbing, especially after Villa’s 3-1 victory over Brentford. But alas. It also left Southampton as the only team (so far, don’t forget there’s still MNF to come tonight) not to score.

Brentford were up to their old tricks of managing to win and win well at home, despite being beaten on the road in the week, but not without allowing Newcastle to put two past them as well.

Palace took City to the edge and nearly collected all three points, but, despite a Rico Lewis red card given, according to Pep, ‘because it’s Rico’, the spoils were shared. This leaves City in *squints* the lowly position of… fourth. But their recent record doesn’t make fun reading (who am I kidding, it’s fucking brilliant).

The evening game brought another Manchester based downfall as United took on *cliche pundit voice* this season’s surprise package, Nottingham Forest.

Before kick off, much was made by Sky of the fact that Forest hadn’t won at Old Trafford for 30 years. From that second I knew that they were going to get something out of the game and it started encouragingly, with a goal for Forest after less than two minutes. 16 minutes later Hojlund scored to restore parity, but then Forest came roaring out of the traps after half time, scoring on the 47th and 54th minute. Bruno scored for United after 61 minutes but Forest held firm for the remaining half an hour and the prophecy was fulfilled.

This has left United sitting 13th in the table and with the news over the weekend that they’ve “parted ways” with Dan Ashworth, the man they were so keen to poach from Newcastle United to be their new Sporting Director, it feels like things aren’t necessarily going to get better any time soon.

While it’s fun to laugh at them and their antics on the pitch it’s also a frustrating story of the way football is run today. INEOS and in partiular, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, seem to be particularly evil and have done nothing to quell what, by all accounts, was a toxic environment. Not to be all Michael Spicer but this is Manchester United and a team with such a longstanding tradition of success and stability shouldn’t really be in this position.

Of course you can’t stay on top forever, we’re witnessing this right now with City, and of course United have themselves had massive wobbles in the past, Fergie joined them at a very bad time for example, and yes, this kind of buying up of football clubs and mismanaging them obviously has a much more devastating effect down the pyramid where we see far too often clubs going into administration, but it’s symptomatic of a money above everything else attitude that is going to kill the game eventually.

Sunday then. Two games were played, what I hilariously refer to as, ‘behind closed doors’ [not televised] and both gave us dramatic comebacks. Firstly Leicester against Brighton, who, having been 0-2 ahead, shipped two late goals to end up with a 2-2 draw. And then there was Ipswich Bournemouth. Ipswich led for much for the match after Chaplin scored on 21 minutes only for Bournemouth to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with goals on the 87th and 90+5th minutes.

Which leaves, I guess, Fulham Arsenal. For me, it was just a really grotty, annoying game. It didn’t surprise me one bit that Fulham scored with their first attack.

We can be so dominant, can move the ball around beautifully and make some lovely passes, it really can be great watching our movement sometimes, but we’re so toothless in attack. Naturally we have the not-so-secret weapon of our set pieces, and in particular our corners, but a man cannot live on set pieces alone, no matter how good they are. We need a clinical finisher, for the current players to have more guts, to not to have to rely on Saliba’s arse.

Having said that, it does frustrate me that pundits are so quick to write us off, notwithstanding the fact that I have written off our title challenge, they should be aware that anything can happen. Liverpool might suddenly have a terrible run of form or a bad injury to VVD or Mo, Chelsea might find their clown car instincts come to the fore, and on the flip side we could go on the kind of run we did from last January, City are more than likely going to find their form for the second half of the season. It can help ease the disappointment to put any hope to bed but also, you just don’t know.

So that was the weekend in the Premier League. Stuff happened in Europe as well. Boringly Bayern, Barcelona and PSG are top of their respective leagues, but I’m surprised to discover that Atalanta are currently top of Serie A. Last I knew Inter were looking solid, I think? Or am I confused with last season? Either way I had no idea the Boys from Bergamo were doing so well, with Napoli currently second. (Ah, Inter have a game in hand which explains it). Either way I should probably pay a bit more attention as it’s the one league whose winner has change hands to someone different over the past several years rather than single team domination with the occasional rogue blip.

You may have noticed a lack of sections this week but we’re still going to be looking at a Drip of the Week and a Thirst Trap.

Starting as always with the Drip.

This week it’s the wonderful collaboration between Skindred, Lovers FC and Newport County which Skindred’s frontman Benji Webbe talks about here.

I think it’s lovely, of course I like the black shirt most but they’re both great designs and now more than ever it’s important to recognise and celebrate diversity in our towns and cities and how these things aren’t separate to but are an essential part of somewhere’s identity.

And to finish off this week it’s time for the Thirst Trap. I’ve been doing this for so long I sometimes feel I’ve exhausted the options among players. Of course there’ll always been someone who comes in from the leftfield that I’ve either never seen or considered before, but for now, I’m turning my attention to managers. We had Amorim last week and with plenty of younger, hipper managers on the scene these days (or maybe it feels that way because I’m old), it’s a rich seam from which to pick.

My choice this week then, is the very handsome, looks like he’d show you a good time even if he stuck very rigidly to his plans and didn’t divert from them, Russell Martin.

For a start, it’s nice to have manager in the Premier League with such luxuriant hair. We have a few of those now too tbf, but probably none as hot as Russell. He may be presiding over one of Southampton’s worst ever performances in the top flight but I will continue to be happy he’s here, even if it’s only for a season.

That’s all for this week, don’t forget to come on over to Bluesky, straddle there and Twitter if you want, I’m not going to judge, just join us there too, we need more football nonsense (notice the lack of funny posts this week??). I’m emilyoram.bsky.social if you need reminding.

Anyway, I hope you have a lovely week and enjoy the European games and/or any Christmas activities you might have planned and as always, I may or may not see you next week 👋🏼