The Home of European champions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Saturday 19^th May was the greatest night in the history of Chelsea Football Club and gave all fans of the club the best day of their lives.

Five days later the glow burns as bright as ever and it is unlikely that this feeling will fade for months despite the legion of detractors queuing up to diminish the achievements of the new Champions of Europe. The manner of victory seems to have upset many who have bemoaned the fact that the defensive tactics adopted by Roberto Di Matteo ultimately prevailed over the fluid attacking football exhibited by Bayern Munich.

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Klaas-Jan Huntelaar (Photo credit: ombrelle)

Just over two months ago when I started this blog I listed the three transfer targets that Chelsea should pursue in the summer if they were to continue in the vein of recent seasons and qualify for the Champions League.

At the time of writing that piece, Andre Villas-Boas was still at the helm and the club sat in the hallowed yet precarious position of fourth place in the Premier League. As we know, times have changed quite considerably since then and with Roberto Di Matteo taking the wheel Chelsea find themselves looking upwards from sixth position having been overtaken by Arsenal and Newcastle with Spurs still sitting in the Champions League places.

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Fabrice Muamba

The reaction of the football world to the stricken Fabrice Muamba’s fight for life on the White Hart Lane pitch has seen the sport and its followers united in sympathy and respect for the Bolton Wanderers player.

Football fans are normally split along territorial, tribal lines with gloating and mocking frequently fermenting into insults and abuse yet the behaviour of the Tottenham fans on Saturday has been rightly commended. What is disturbing is that anyone is surprised. After all, each spectator was just a human being witnessing a fellow person struggling against the ultimate challenge and compassion, correctly and inevitably, supplanted cynicism among the 36,000 people present.

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The soap opera continues at Chelsea as Andre Villas-Boas exits stage left.

Is there ever a dull season at Stamford Bridge? Even when the performances are drab and guileless the intrigue and subterfuge in the dressing room and corridors of power ensure that drama is at the heart of operations in SW6.

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Villas-Boas Doing Himself No Favours

For some, Andre Villas-Boas’ team selection for Chelsea’s match against Napoli was a bold statement, an attempt to sweep out the rebellious stalwarts of a bygone era and replace them with the next wave of Chelsea stars who would recreate the club’s impressive record in the Champions League over the past decade.

After a 3-1 defeat littered with defensive errors and incohesion, nostalgia for the bygone era grew ever more palpable.

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Drogba The Key To Positive Result

Chelsea step into the lions den when they play SSC Napoli in the Stadio San Paolo on Tuesday night.

Waiting to pounce will be a formidable front three of Edinson Cavani, Ezequiel Lavezzi and Marek Hamsik roared on by 60,000 Neapolitans with the press pack waiting to pick over the bones of Andre Villas-Boas’ should the home side take a significant advantage from the first leg of this last 16 round of the Champions League.

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WIll Abramovich back his manager or the players?

It’s February in a faltering season for Chelsea Football Club so that can only mean one thing.

Insurrection.

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The statement by Argentina president Cristina Kirchner that her country will lodge an official complaint with the United Nations Security council over what she calls Britain’s “militarisation of the South Atlantic” is so breathtaking in irony and arrogance that it simply cannot be ignored.

Her words have been uttered in response to news that the UK is sending a warship to patrol the waters around the Falkand Islands, a practice that has been in effect ever since the war over the sovereignty of the sub-antarctic archipelago in 1982. Granted, the ship being sent to the area is the pride of the Royal Navy, HMS Dauntless, and it arrives as Prince William begins his six-week posting in the Falklands but it hardly constitutes “militarisation”.

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Little Joy For England Fans

Being an England sports fan has been particularly trying over the past few days.

The never-ending saga surrounding John Terry and the fallout from the FA’s decision to remove him from the captaincy has been impossible to escape from and has totally overshadowed events taking pace on the field. Over the past couple of years, the malaise of our footballers has usually been offset by the triumphs of our cricket team but the last few weeks have forced the number one ranked team in the world to experience a sobering dose of reality.

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After a match like that, it is always difficult to describe one’s overriding emotion as it flicks between pleasure and disappointment, the concession of a three-goal lead against Manchester United counter-balanced by the realism that most of us would have accepted a draw prior to kick off.

But 24 hours is a long time in the mind of a football fan and, having slept on it, there are considerably more positives than negatives for Chelsea to take out of the game.

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