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In Defence

After a quick scan of the nationals this morning, it seems that there’s nothing to be said that hasn’t already been covered. Still, a fan should have the resilience to comment about last night’s fiasco, even while the bile of defeat is lingering on the tastebuds. Bile cappuccino for breakfast? I don’t recommend it.

There are no words to defend Didier Drogba, whose actions went beyond reasonable  protest and into the realm of the embarrassing and histrionic. Just as Eric Abidal and Co raised their hands and pleaded with the referee after what looked a harsh but perfectly defensible red card – what’s he going to do, change his mind? – so several Chelsea players felt the need to express their dissatisfaction in the strongest possible terms short of giving the hapless Norwegian a good kicking.

It certainly wasn’t right. But the incompetence that preceded it has only ensured one thing: that Manchester United will choke the life out of Barcelona’s much-vaunted attacking stars every bit as effectively as Chelsea did last night, and that UEFA’s showpiece final will have an ending every bit as predictable as the Titanic movie. I wonder what Sir Alex’s chuckle count was in the final minute or two of the game. Edging the dozen, I’d think.

After all the ill will, though, one can only offer some congratulations to Barca, who stuck to their guns and earned a priceless reward with the final round in the chamber. The previous wild shots may have all been blanks, but the last one was armour-piercing. And if you think that metaphor was laboured, you should have seen the tortuous bugger it replaced. It was, indeed, a brilliantly-taken goal from a player that I described last week as the world’s best central midfielder. On last night’s showing, any team coveting Messi should cast their eye a little inwards and wonder how much money it would take to prise this diminutive spectre from Barca’s grasp. He’s a genius.

By contrast, his Argentinian team-mate was comfortably held in check by stolid, creative and – for the most part – relatively comfortable defending. The nerves were mainly inspired by the narrow nature of the lead, not the constant piercing of the back line. Eto’o, who might as well not have been on the pitch for large swathes of the game, was the worst offender. How the blaugrana missed Henry.

And Drogba missed his chances. The big man’s profligacy in front of goal in both legs has come back to haunt us, as he disdained two golden opportunities to put the tie beyond doubt. Florent Malouda, working as hard as I’ve ever seen him, created decent attacking outlets that we couldn’t quite turn into goals. Frank Lampard lofted some beautifully-weighted passes into the Ivorian’s path. It wasn’t to be.

Make no mistake. If you’re leading 2-0 and walk off the pitch 5-2 down, you can’t blame a single refereeing decision for turning the game. If you have 3 or 4 chances to win the game and don’t, there are only so many excuses you can make if the result doesn’t go your way. I’ve read “3 or 4” penalty appeals. John Terry, I think, has been quoted as saying “5 or 6”. Personally, 3 sounds about right. But 2 of those – the shove on Malouda early on where a free kick was given outside the area, and Pique’s handball – were nailed-on, stone-cold, are you ****ing blind penalties.

Bitter? Damn right I am. If nothing else, now I have to consider the possibility that - shudder - I may be supporting United in the final.

Chelsea: cynicism or sense?

Now I know how Tony Mowbray feels.

See, earlier in the season the sages of Television Centre, Hansen and Lawrenson, were united in lip-curling contempt for the West Brom manager’s, er... optimistic, shall we say, approach to the game. Despite being ‘blessed’ with what is effectively a Championship squad sprinkled with players with some Premiership form – Jonathan Greening, for example – Mowbray insisted on playing the way that had brought his team success in the lower division the year before. Pass and move. Room in the middle. None of this negative campaigning. The players have talent, so let them express it.

Chelsea: Takes two to moonwalk

It’s easy for me to say it, and no doubt Liverpool fans won’t particularly want to hear it this morning. But all I can summon up is thanks. Thanks for contributing to a tie which has gone a long way to banishing the leaden memories we all have of previous encounters, and producing one of the most astonishing nights of football I’ve seen in a long time.

From the persistence and delicacy of Lucas – Lucas! – taking the vacant Gerrard role behind the striker to Alonso’s domination of midfield in the first half, and from Kuyt’s energy and industry to Mascherano’s complete nullification of Essien as a contributor to the game, Liverpool produced a barnstorming 90 minutes of football. The fact that both sides littered their intricate and occasionally scintillating approach play with some baffling mistakes at the back – Messrs Cech, Carvalho, Ivanovic, Skrtel and Reina were all more than culpable – may have added to the frenzy and created the spectacle, but it’s as far away from the catenaccio of previous games as it’s possible to get. Whatever the result had been, the forward trio of Messi, Eto’o and Henry would be anticipating a glut of opportunities in the semi-final meeting in two weeks.

So my applause and respect to Liverpool, a side that has exchanged plenty of bile with Chelsea over the past few years. Perhaps, with this game falling into step with a solemn anniversary in Yorkshire and on Merseyside, it’s fitting both that the game was of such mesmeric intensity, and that the two teams and managers showed respect and warmth to each other when the tie was over.

After all, it is only football. Heart-freezing, can’t-turn-away, can’t-bear-to-look, teeth-clenching football, sure. But, in the end, just a game. I hope we all remember that when the inevitable Champions League tie between these two teams comes around next year.

Something To Offend Nearly Everyone

I don’t know how other Fanzone writers go about it, but I like to set myself a challenge when I sit down to write a Chelsea piece. Something like ‘Don’t make a predictable crack about the lack of Salford-based United fans’ or ‘Try to avoid comparing delusional Toon supporters to the unwoken meat puppets in The Matrix’. In theory, it stops you from getting lazy and phoning in the gags.  In practice, it means that you can occasionally knock out an opening paragraph like this one, bemoaning rubbish stereotype jokes and using them at the same time. Hey, there’s a recession on.

Today’s theme is ‘Don’t mention Frank Lampard’ who, as the solitary seasoned Fanzone Chelsea reader – cheers Grahame - will tell you, is something of an obsession with yours truly. At this point, I’d go off into an extended paean of praise and harp on interminably about the man’s gifts, but not today. Today is ‘Don’t mention you-know-who’ day.

So, as the freakshow Gestapo redhead chap says in Raiders of the Lost Ark... what shall we talk about? I suppose there’s some sort of game coming up in midweek that’s probably worth of a mention, but the sheer ennui of metaphorically walking out of the tunnel and standing face to  face with sodding Liverpool yet again... well, pass me the Xanax and the Laphroaig bottle. Another pair of bloody cup ties with everyone’s favourite victims, and not even the cursory amusement of a little José to brighten up what promises to be another 180 minutes of stolid, turgid, indigestible football. The barium meal of the World’s Greatest Club Competition, if you will. Is there a more depressing sentence than "Some managers want to play too many mind games. With Hiddink, it will just be about football"? Christ, Rafa, the mind games were the most enjoyable bits of the whole debacle.

 Of course, you could never accuse Sir Alex of playing mind games: not when his barbed verbal hand grenades carry all the psychological insight of Lesbian Vampire Killers. Still, it was interesting to see him benefit from one of European football’s repellent legal loopholes at the weekend. For those that aren’t keeping up with soi-disant Saint Platini and his attempts to modernise a few of the rules (or, to your bigoted knuckle-dragging Barry, to hamstring In-ger-land’s great clubs in Europe) there was a recent presentation made to the European Parliament in which Platini suggested that labour laws be tightened. Specifically, the UEFA president wanted to make it illegal for 18-year olds to be the subject of international transfers.

I talked about this some time ago and it inspired some interesting debate. The pick of the comments were:

“What about youngsters playing in poverty stricken countries without proper facilities. It is not fair on them and hence the law will not be passed.”

Wonderful, “Sam”. That’s what the clubs are really up to... providing a much-needed service for promising young starlets to fight their way out of poverty. Christ, I can smell the altruism from here. Or is it bull****?

“So Platini thinks it's ok for the French army to recruit 17 year old kids and ship them abroad, but it's not ok for an English football club to bring in kids from abroad to play football until they're 18.
Laughable.”

That one, in case there’s any doubt at all, comes from “Wrightstuff”, so it seems safe to say that he’s a Gooner with one nervous eye on how much further off the pace Arsenal will get without the chance to buy job lots of skinny francophone Africans every other year.

I bring this whole issue up again because of the quote made by Lazio president Claudio Lotito today. Signor Lotito is rather miffed that Lazio had a promising 16-year-old half-inched from his books by a certain American-owned Salford-based company. This promising lad, now 17, then went and scored a rather important injury-time winner for said American company on Sunday.

“I talked repeatedly with Macheda's parents, we established a dialogue, but it was not possible to do anything. We could not compete with United's offer. That is not right, we have to be provided with more reliable and concrete rules than those which govern Italian clubs."

Frustrating. And don’t think for a moment that I’m singling out United: it’s just a timely example. Many “big” clubs do this.  And why wouldn’t you? It doesn’t cost you much. Italian law, like that of many other European countries, forbids the club from signing professional terms with the player until they turn 18. It’s a very similar situation to a few years ago when Barcelona were apoplectic at the sleight of hand with which one of their most promising teens was taken from them just before he was eligible to sign. You might have heard of him: Francesc Fabregas.

Yes, I can hear the United supporters cracking their knuckles as we speak, all ready to type their comments about jealousy and the League (for the record, I didn’t think we could win it before Hiddink won 6 out of 7 and I still don’t). It’s just so obviously wrong to do it. This is the part of the argument that I just can’t understand... the bit where everyone looks at Platini and starts bitching about bias, or prejudice, or anti-English sentiment, or whatever. How can it possibly, possibly be a bad thing to make the game less bloated? Look at Liverpool’s squad... 62 players, with 17 kids out on loan. Having said that, look at Chelsea’s squad before Mourinho trimmed it. Or our embarrassing snaffling of Leeds teenagers. Or any number of other incidents involving any number of clubs throughout the continent.

I’ll give the last word to another commentor from the previous Platini article, because it’s one of the purest examples I’ve ever seen of someone utterly missing the point.

“Yes, money has changed football, but it has made it better! Players are pushed to huge heights by the rewards of success and costs of failure. This is the first time ever that English people can honestly say the ability of teams in our top flight compares to Italy and Spain, and even that we have the "best league in the world". Because of this, we pump more money into it, and our footballers get paid more. The only thing that doesn't make sense is the lack of really large campaigns to have ticket prices slashed. Maybe it's because fewer people care about that one than is thought?”

Thank you, “Michael”, for editing out English football’s European heyday in the 70s and 80s, celebrating a business model which thinks it’s acceptable to pay people a reasonably large annual salary on a weekly basis, and ignoring the last gasps of supporter activism in the country.  Thank you, and good night.

Platini and the soul of football

Is it too late to save football’s soul? 

There’s much to admire in Michel Platini’s recent – and clearly heartfelt – appeal to the European Parliament. For those that haven’t had time to look over it, the two issues that stuck out for me were:

Chelsea: Something else broken

At times like this, your first reaction might be to rant and rave. All this talk about continuity, about consistency, about giving the manager the opportunity to create a legacy... all those things that Bobby Charlton was muttering about not so very long ago. Well, they’ve turned out to be so much hot air and Chelsea are looking to hire their fourth manager in 17 months. I've chosen to paraphrase Didier Drogba's infamous quote in the title, not because I believe that we're irretrievably in the mire, but because much of the responsibility for the situation we're in has to fall upon the players as well as the coaches.

Briefly electric, expansive and full of goals, Luiz Felipe Scolari’s Chelsea-ya turned out to be one-paced, containable and defensively suspect. In turn, the manager found that the world’s economic climate was against him. No opportunity to sign the fearlessly creative forwards that he craved. No chance to plug the ever-widening gaps in his ageing squad. Of the 20-odd men who lined up in Chelsea’s squad at the beginning of the season, I can think carefully and objectively and point to precisely 4 players that have come close to living up to their billing this term.

Nicolas Anelka delivered a mini-glut of goals earlier in the season, picking off lesser opposition with aplomb. There was, briefly, a temptation to imagine that Chelsea might be the club he needed to express himself, but non-performances against title contenders belie the initial optimism. Besides, I’ve been wrong before. I remember feeling terribly gung-ho about Juan Veron, a player that I admired and thought Alex Ferguson had never fully understood. Turned out that no one understood him, least of all Claudio Ranieri.

Ashley Cole has, if anything, looked as strong this season as he ever has in a Chelsea shirt. It almost seems unfair to criticise Ashley for humdrum performances earlier in his Chelsea career, as he’s not the sort of player whose work rate often comes into question. The false dawn of the attacking fullback has, unsurprisingly, suited him.

I’ve been harsh about Salomon Kalou in the past. Just when you think the boy is about to step out of Drogba’s shadow and prove precisely why he’s the player that van Basten was so keen to register for Holland, he goes and has one of those non-games where he gives the ball away 35 times and falls over a fair bit. But we’ve needed goal support in the complete and utter absence of Drogba in any game whatsoever this season – one cup sub appearance notwithstanding – and the boy has scored some important ones.

Finally, the evergreen, ever-committed and seemingly un-injurable – touch wood – Frank Lampard, who has yet again been Chelsea’s best, most influential, and most important player.

Everyone else has a case to answer. At a pinch, we might excuse Ricardo Carvalho, but the ever-more-frequent injuries tell their own story.

So while longing for the stability of, say Real Madrid or the Italian political landscape, what are Chelsea’s options? Are they willing to give Frank Rijkaard a real crack of the whip, or would he be tainted by coming in and steering us to, say, a simply-not-good-enough fifth place? Could Avram Grant  possibly get past the ignominious manner with which he was shunted out of the post not eight months ago? Dare we, Chelsea fans, dream of José saddling up a white charger and returning to triumphantly steal a third Premiership crown from under Sir Alex’s puce proboscis?

I’m going to go out on a limb here – and, knowing my luck, the man’s in the Cobham boardroom right now putting pen to paper - and say that Hiddink can absolutely do without this job. Why would a man two years Scolari’s senior - and being remunerated very handsomely for an international job which requires about 12 weeks of hard graft a year - want a job that has just chewed up and spat out a respected colleague?

Finally, a little sanity amongst all this heady talk about Saint Franco of Zola strolling in to save the world with his faithful equerry Steve Clarke. No one wants Franco to make a joyful return to the Bridge more than I. But let’s give him the chance to do it right... not to do it when we’re in a mess and desperately fighting fires to stay in contention for the Champions’ League places. Franco’s halo still shines as brightly as it ever did with the fans. Think how depressing it would be to see it tarnished through circumstances not of his own making.

Chelsea: At a crossroads

I approached the Fanzone with some trepidation this morning. Through one half-closed eye, I ran down the list of recent posts. A triumphal Liverpool post would, I thought, act as the Gorgon to my Polydectes, turning me instantly to stone. If, by ‘stone’, I really mean ‘helpless and incoherent bundle of rage’.

Nothing. Not a bean. Looks like I’ll be getting my retaliation in first, then.

First things first. Chelsea were awful. And by ‘awful’, I mean ‘devoid of ideas’, ‘fractured and incoherent’, and ‘offering all the attacking depth of the Women’s Auxiliary Balloon Corps’. Mikel looked lost and harried in a log-jammed midfield. Lampard showed few moments of virtuosity, a flick or two aside, before his harsh sending off. The best we can say of the team is that, had Mike Riley not decided to go for the headlines, we would probably have hung on for a goalless draw. How are the mighty fallen.

What to do with this team, assembled so expensively and now with what looks to be three successive seasons of underachievement to deal with? Nothing is over yet, of course, and the League has a long way to run. Even so, Scolari’s record against the teams adjudged to be title challengers is dismal. There is no consistency in defence, with Carvalho or Terry usually injured and the Brazilian manager's favoured option for width – attacking fullbacks – leaving us exposed time and again when we meet experienced opposition. Claudio Ranieri must be chuckling into his limoncello in anticipation of Juventus’ visit at the end of the month. I don’t suppose someone could slip a Mickey Finn into Del Piero’s Horlicks, could they?

There was an almost audible sigh of relief as José Mourinho kindly donated the out-of-favour Ricardo Quaresma to us as the transfer window juddered to its usual panicky close. On current form it’s an Elastoplast on a gaping shotgun wound to the head, given our lack of invention in the final third last Sunday. If Roman remains as committed as ever – and I note that several newspapers have been at pains to point out that this is the case, doubtless aware of the writ the club has served on an organ not a million miles away from this very website – then some serious thinking needs to be done between now and the beginning of the next transfer opportunity over the summer. The futures of Malouda, Drogba and Deco must surely be called into question. Michael Ballack’s intermittent form is also cause for concern. I’ve used the Elastoplast analogy already, so I’ll have to think of something else to describe Salomon Kalou’s recent goalscoring exploits. The boy has got us out of jail more than once in recent weeks, but that shouldn’t hide his all-too-common on-field demeanour: that of a quick and tricky goalscoring forward who seems, usually, to be neither quick enough nor tricky enough to score many goals.

And therein lies the real problem. Restocking defenders rarely seems to be as much trouble as freshening up an attacking line-up. Predators and creators are, rightly, the most coveted and expensive of employees. Buying in players of the very highest quality – the Messis, the Benzemas – costs lots and lots of someone’s money. If we believe what we’re told, that money won’t be coming from Roman. And, with the club stretching every sinew to break even, the money from a (hopefully) renewed and improved Samsung deal won’t go very far. New stadium? Maybe, maybe not. Merchandising? No good unless we’re winning, surely.

I’ve wittered on about this before, but there is an opportunity for the club to make some serious decisions about where it is going. The dwindling influence of Frank Arnesen is testament to the Dane’s failure to indentify the searing prospects that his CV led us to expect. The culling of a large number of his scouts points to a loss of interest in the Europe-wide identification of promising youth. Perhaps there is already a plan in place to concentrate efforts on a specific region. Chelsea have, under Roman, attempted to tap into English talent, but names like Tom Taiwo, Michael Woods and even Scott Sinclair have not featured on our radar for some time.

I don’t mean, necessarily, that we should avoid spending to spite ourselves. Arsene Wenger has illustrated, rather elegantly, that that’s a one-way ticket to battling for fifth. But the points above are a reasonable argument for describing ourselves as a club in transition... or perhaps a club at a crossroads.  Which way does Roman see us turning? What vision does he have of the next 5... or 10, or 20 years?

Enquiring minds want to know.

Chelsea / Manchester City: Employer Power

Try and contain your frustration with the following remark, Chelsea fans.

Chelsea Football Club has a certain amount of sympathy for the situation that Manchester City Football Club finds itself in.

No, this is not the precursor to a sneering 500 words about how Chelsea didn’t have quite the same problems persuading, say, Hernan Crespo to come to Stamford Bridge. After all, Kaka is in quite a different league to Crespo, despite the latter’s place at the top table of accumulated transfer fees. Then again, Kaka is in a different league to just about everyone.

It is now clear that Garry Cook and his team were in negotiations with Milan for some time. Take your pick of the various reports quoting the actual figure involved. My newspaper says £108 million. Yours probably says something quite different. I’ve seen £91m, £243m, and several figures in between. Let’s try and nail it down by calling it “quite a lot”.

Of course, Kaka could never lose this one. Go to Manchester, play for two years and buy Barbados with the proceeds, or stay, get to kiss the badge for years and (on the occasion of his retirement) never have to buy a drink for himself in Milan. Ever.  Like I said: no-lose.

The obvious difference between City’s situation and that of Chelsea? The starting point, of course. A team containing Lampard, Gudjohnsen, Zola, Terry and Desailly is a slightly easier sell to a prospective superstar than a team whose most consistent performer in recent years has been either Richard Dunne or Stephen Ireland. All of this is clear. And yet a combination of premature ejaculation at Chelsea board level and a slightly thicker wedge of notes in City’s top pocket led to the arrival of Robinho. Not, quite, at the very top table of European football, but certainly standing ominously behind one of the chairs and eyeing it up for comfort.

The question for City has to be: could this renaissance be over before it’s really begun?

Allow me to throw you a brief analogy. You’re in a grubby nightclub. You’ve been eyeing up the least grimy-looking lass in there for the past hour or two. You’ve finally sunk enough WKD and Aftershock to summon up the mental strength to go over and try your best lines. And then you have a glass of Malibu and pineapple unceremoniously dumped all over your new Stone Island shirt. All the other grimy lasses look on.

What do you suppose your chances will be with any of them? What, do you think, does the unmistakeable scent of eau de rejection add to your mojo? I don’t really need to spell it out for you, do I?

Not that Mr Cook has exactly endeared himself to the market by his subsequent and in no way bitter comments.

“We had entered into a confidentiality agreement weeks ago but, in my personal opinion, they [Milan] bottled it. We had gone through a three or four-stage process in which Milan made it quite clear Kaka was for sale and we made it clear we intended to bring him to Manchester City. As we got to the next stage there were questions they could not answer and I think the political and public pressure made them change their conditions."

Personally, I struggle a little with the idea that there was some vast conspiracy to deny City the player that should rightfully have been theirs. Public pressure? Obviously. Kaka is Milan’s outstanding player: a reasonably youthful man of sublime talent playing at a club where – excuse me, City fans – history demands a certain dignity. Don’t jump all over me for that – I’m well aware of the shortcomings my own club faces when it comes to talking about history (although, having said that, there’ll always be a Scouser or 10 queuing up to say it again).

The point is that 6 times European Cup winners aren’t supposed to sell their talismans. You might as well have tried to prise Messi and Krkic from Barca, or Casillas from Madrid, or even Rooney and the shiny Madeiran from over the road. They may need the money, but do they need it THAT badly? Obviously not.

Throughout all of this, Mark Hughes remains a bit-part figure: submitting his modest and perfectly sensible targets to his Dubai employers and watching as “Bellamy” and “De Jong” are shunted to the bottom of the list, and “Kaka” (and, possibly, the genetically-engineered clone of a 24-year-old Gerd Mueller) are pushed in above them. How do you discipline your players when they, like everyone else, know damn well that you’re even more expendable than they are? What do you say to Robinho when he flounces out of your winter training camp when you’re all too aware that the owners bust a gut to get him, but could replace you in a week?

I have immense sympathy for a man who, although he’ll always be a United player to me, did a fantastic job for Chelsea in his time at the Bridge and who I rate very highly as a manager and a motivator. If he is feeling a little disillusioned as the days of the transfer window drag on to their mucky conclusion, may I recommend a chat with one of the few managers in the world who might be able to sympathise?  As far as I can remember, his English is terrible, but he’s a bloody nice bloke.

Give Claudio Ranieri a call. When it comes to being dignified in the face of owner power, he wrote the book.

Motivation, motivation, motivation... the three Ms

How do you do your job? Come to think of it, how do you live your life?

Apologies for the huge, quasi-metaphysical introduction to what will doubtless be a terribly banal bit of football frippery, but I was inspired by a comment left on the last Chelsea article. Sadly, I’m locked out of the comments section at the moment so none of them are published. You’ll have to take my word for it.

If you missed the last piece, it had to do with that enigma wrapped in a mystery wrapped in a short-arsed deep-lying forward: Joe Cole. Hugely popular with Chelsea fans... well, popular with everyone, if we’re honest. He’s one of the very few Chelsea players that it’s acceptable for non-Chelsea fans to like.

The comment, left by a chap calling himself Brian, ran thusly:

“Joe Cole is a player that needs to be kept on his toes all the time to get the best out of him”.

Now, this is the Times, so I’m assuming that most of the readers will have gone beyond the stage at which they think, with the right breaks and a decent spell of fitness, they could do a decent job in midfield for, say, Brentford or Leyton Orient. We’re all adults. We’re well aware of the freakish levels of fitness and athleticism required at the top level (Mark Viduka and John Hartson notwithstanding). But if you’re a football fan you must have yearned, nay, burned to play. Give me a fulcrum and a number 8 shirt and I’ll move the world. Why on earth would I need to be motivated, cajoled, hassled and harried to play football AND be paid thousands of pounds a day to do so?

This is a question shouted on many, many occasions at top-flight matches up and down the country, although I’m willing to admit that the precise phrasing can vary. Sometimes the player’s style does him no favours. Ballack certainly had that problem at Chelsea, and I believe Berbatov is suffering a similar reaction at Old Trafford. Languid, graceful players can conceivably be seen as lazy simply because they don’t tear around the pitch like Wayne Rooney chasing a Spandex-clad Thora Hird. It’s probably why the Chelsea fans never really turned on Shevchenko. Awful, awful mess of a one-time genius though the man was, he tried and he tried. 10 out of 10 for effort, and a hundred-odd grand a week. For that money, I’d have undergone extensive facial reconstructive surgery and gone on the pitch in his place. I wouldn’t have been any worse, he could have worked on his handicap, and there’s always the outside chance I could have fiddled a cheeky knee-trembler with that model wife of his (“Andriy, I’m so impressed with your English all of a sudden... oh, and a new tattoo... darling how nice etc”).

Back to the comment on the blog. Because it doesn’t end with Joe Cole. Brian mentions three Chelsea players that, in his opinion, don’t require a regular kick up the passage. Just three, sadly, and you can probably guess two of them. To add to Captain JT26 and Super Frank Lampard, Brian gives us Petr Cech. Whilst I agree that the lanky fella is a great professional and seems an admirably nice young man whenever I see him interviewed, there aren’t many occasions when you’d be able to barrack a goalie for not trying. You can’t exactly shout abuse at him for not jogging up and down on the spot enough when the ball’s in the other half, can you?

So. Three men, out of a squad of, what, 23 or so? Three people who get up every morning and want to do nothing other than play football. Maybe it is just another job after all. Maybe my romantic notions are nonsense, and when Deco gets out of his Aston Martin 177 and brushes the lint off his baby sealskin slacks, all he can think is “Christ, not another 5-hour day kicking an inflated plasto-leather sphere up and down a grass field”. Perhaps Salomon Kalou, in between slices of swan pate, suddenly throws down his platinum cutlery, irritably shrugs the model out of his lap, slumps onto the Philippe Starck-designed dinner table and starts weeping uncontrollably, overcome by the sheer pointlessness of it all.

Personally, I think Brian’s being a little harsh. I think Chelsea are blessed with some superlatively strong characters, and they’ve got us through some tough times. In the last couple of years, the club has struggled for direction and purpose without the brilliant, infuriating, mercurial man that used to manage it. Much as we owe the owner for his munificence and enthusiasm, he gives the fan nothing to latch onto. After 5 and a half years, we still don’t really know who he is. When Chelsea have come under the pressure engendered by the success of 2004 through to 2006, players like Ricardo Carvalho, Michael Essien, the great Claude Makelele, Paulo Ferreira and, more recently, Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa have been there to set examples too.

I’m not denigrating the captain’s or vice-captain’s roles. Things would be that much harder without them. I think the spine of the team is larger – and stronger – than Brian and those that agree with him would have us believe. But there is absolutely no doubt that the current squad has, within, an element with a questionable work ethic. Every company, every business - every organisation where the whole is dependent on the efforts of a disparate group of individuals – has these problems. The nature of people is that some need to be micro-managed. Some can get up every day and find it within themselves to get on with it; and to the best of their ability, without the coaching equivalent of Full Metal Jacket’s Gunnery Sergeant Hartman screaming into their lughole.

Over the next 5 months, we’ll really find out who’s who. And with the League running as tightly at the top as it is, the prizes for being able to motivate yourself are as high as it’s going to get, gentlemen.

Who’s ready to step up?

If Joe Cole isn't the answer, who is?

Devil’s advocate? Not me. That would be Keanu Reeves, starring in a particularly execrable film alongside about 5 per cent of Al Pacino’s range. But it’s probably best to preface the whole piece with those two words, because the rest of it is going to annoy a fair few people.

To give things context, you have to go back to when José lost the title in 2006-7. The early signs of friction between manager and board centred on a point of contention so banal as to be almost ludicrous: Tal ben Haim. The mediocre – sorry, Tal – centre back was held up as an example of the difference between a title-winning side and a runner-up.

With the Israeli’s arrival in the January transfer window, the impact of the injuries we suffered at the back would have been cancelled out. Or so José said.