José is a Liar
Posted by Zeno in Chelsea | 21 August 2006
I feel robbed, that’s how I feel. I feel as though a trusted friend has betrayed me. That, in some strange and non-invasive way, I’ve been violated by a person whose views I’ve always respected and taken at face value. Someone I’ve come to see as a big brother… nay, even a sort of avuncular figure.
But it turns out that, the whole time, José was lying to me.
Let me explain. Just t’other day I was slumped, mouth slightly agape, across my Laz-Y-Boy™ Mk 44Z Personal Reclining System, shovelling Chees-I-Os into my maw with one hand and cupping my testicles with the other. This still gave me just enough purchase to turn the pages of my Super Soaraway Red Top of choice with my right earlobe, which – thanks to my vast intake of sodium and saturated fat - has now swelled to such grotesque proportions that I can use it as a small but functioning limb. If that isn’t progress, I don’t know what is.
What better position to digest the Saturday chip wrapper, you might ask? Well, not many. Imagine my contentment. It will give you some context.
There I am. And there, in big bold black letters – meaning they’re TRUE – are the words of my saviour and manager. And he tells me that Chelsea are not ready for the upcoming season. Not ready? I splutter and spray cheese-flavoured salt-based snackables all over my new-age fabric athletic top. Not ready? But you manage 20-odd of the most finely-honed athletes this side of It’s a Royal Knockout! And what about that extensive period of training they underwent over the summer? I mean, that’s national training, that is. Must, logically, be superior to the club training you lot get up to in Cobham, no? Alright, so Sven’s sent Joe Cole back with knee-knack and Petr Cech’s having an operation on his shoulder and Makelele’s got to draw his pension this week and Asier del Horno’s… er… gone, and Geremi appears to be a bit poorly but hell he never played anyway and Ballack’s gone and done something to his hip… look, for goodness’ sake, surely you people can pull 16 fellows together, tell 5 of them that they’re not playing, then shove the other 11 on the pitch and tell them to get on with it? No? No?
Well, apparently not, until 4pm yesterday afternoon, when Chelsea walked out onto the pitch and stuffed City 3-0.
Now I know that City at home is not going to be Chelsea’s toughest challenge of the season, and before you all start shouting that’s no disrespect to City. Chelsea away might not be the toughest thing City has to deal with either. But on a warmish summer afternoon on the season’s first weekend, a half-fit Chelsea side with several key players missing (let’s just pretend that Gallas doesn’t exist, for the time being… that’s another post all together and I hate stopping a perfectly good rant halfway through to start another one) well and truly put Pearce’s boys to the sword. Clinical, occasionally effervescent, and very very comfortable. Andriy Shevchenko looked a little quiet, but – one or two moments aside – wasn’t getting the ball-to-feet service that we were hoping for. So if the stiletto fails, use the sledgehammer. And goals from Terry and Drogba certainly qualified, even if the latter’s glancing header - from Robben’s and Bridge’s outstanding work down the left – owed rather more to footballing craft and skill than we’re used to seeing from the mercurial Mack truck of the Ivory Coast.
So why have I bored everyone to tears by walking them through this little fable of betrayal and anxiety? Because people lie, that’s why, and you all knew it as soon as you’d finished the first paragraph of my poorly-prefabbed polemic. Because it still comes as a surprise to some people – you know who you are – that managers josh with you, taunt you, tease and annoy you. As evidence, I ask you to look no further than Exhibit A: Rafa Benitez’ continued assertion that Liverpool can win domestic and European honours this season. Oh, please. You conceded a Rob Hulse goal on Saturday. I rest my case.
