Chelsea trains for Sunday’s derby with Arse(a)nal. (picture related)
Chelsea is ready for whatever sort of fußball Arse(a)nal brings to the Bridge tomorrow (as I write this….or 100 years ago, as you read this (if) ). Ake, Schurrle, Zouma, and Willian are ready to go, and the rest of the lads are all set. So whatever Arsenal brings, and believe me when I say it won’t be much given their fairly sorry state at the moment, Chelsea will have it covered.
Yeh yeh I know, Arse gave Gala a 4-0 beat down last Wednesday at The Emirates. They survived the contumelious dismissal of goalie Wojciech Szczęsny at the hour mark. They even survived the flares and fireworks of the visiting Gala fans.
So Arsenal has resilience. But it’ll be a pyrrhic resilience at best.
Chelsea will have it all covered.
Someday you will look back through the historical records of football in England in the early 21st century and see that I was right.
Zenit St. Petersburg 0 Monaco 0
Andre Vilas-Boas has landed a bit better from failure than David Moyes has. While Moyes is on the golf course preparing for the next Ryder Cup or British Open or a crack at the PGA Senior Tour, AVB has scrabbled his way out of two failures ((that would be at Chelsea and Tootenham for those of you louts who find themselves stumbling out of Traxx Bar & Grill in North Fond du Lac, Wisconsin at 2:03 in the morning primed to hop the next Canadian National freight train out of town. Not the brightest idea now, mind….but at that hour, what else can you expect?)) and landed deftly in Soviet focking Russia as the gaffer for Zenit St. Pete.
He’s guiding them through the Champions League, which is more than Mr. Moyes’ successor at ManU(re) is doing at the moment. Zenit rests comfortably atop the Russian Premier League table. I guess The AVB Project plays a little better on the other side of the Iron Curtain.
Perhaps Mr. Moyes should bust a Russian Oligarch a phone call and ask, “Mind if I play through?”
Tomorrow’s Match of The Day: West Ham United vs. Queens Park Rangers (picture not related)
By the time your grandchildren’s grandchildren comb through the old, archived match reports in some dusty library throwback of the future to read about tomorrow’s Match of The Day so as to gain an understanding into our troubled times, no doubt it will all have been noted with alacrity and soon forgotten by the time you read this. Your young progeny of the future might have a different tale to tell.
They might find a poignant charm in whatever antics Joey Barton and Rio Ferdinand engage in tomorrow in their no doubt futile effort to avoid defeat. Or it could be their forthright valor in victory that sparks their imagination in that far off world of tomorrow, and several days after that. Years. Centuries no doubt. Perhaps even on a distant planet.
Be sure to tune in at 10:15 AM Central time to NBCSN tomorrow if you happen to read this before your far off progeny do. I will. And so should you. But have some cold beer ready. You will need it.
Football. Bloody Hell!!
The Japanese Gran Prix will be over by the time you read this.
Guess who has the pole for the Japanese Gran Prix which tees off at 12:30 AM on NBCSN in about 5 hours and change as I write these words on graph paper with a Purple Uniball Vision Elite pen?
You really only have two guesses, really. Meaning two to guess from.
It’s either Rosberg or Hamilton.
So take a guess.
And while you’re at it, take a guess who will join those two lads on the podium this week. You have 20 drivers to choose from there. But only 5 or 6 of them are likely candidates to join the Two Petulant Ones for a shower of fackin champagne.
NASCAR should implement this podium concept to spark more interest or contempt. Have AT it lads!!
Only with beer and/or soda pop instead on champagne.
Maybe try it out in the Camping World Truck Series first.
Nah….scratch that! Bring it to the big dance and let the fireworks begin. As Jeff Burton once said,
“You don’t want the real story….it’s way better when it’s made up.”
And speaking of NASCAR….
Leeds United 1 Sheffield Wednesday 1
While the 12 Chase Contenders search for clues on how to achieve victory at Kansas tomorrow, the 4 former Chase Contenders who were knocked out after Dover, having been cut to the quick and sitting on 2000 points and change….the change being whatever points they now have jangling in their pockets after the first 3 Chase races….those lads are sifting through the scene of the crime to find out what went so grievously wrong.
It will take a bit of detective work no doubt, but even if they sweep away the red herrings and then unravel the threads of evidence, any deduction will be just a small comfort at best.
Then again, knowledge is power, so they say. But even if they find some power through their shrewd detection, it wont do them much good as far as the Chase is concerned. They’re now on the outside looking in. A win in a win, of course. And if either of The Biff, The Dinger, Kurt Busch, or Aric Almirola win at Kansas tomorrow, I’m sure they will be happy as little girls all the same. Their mothers will be happy as well. So how nice would that be? VERY nice, of course.
I’m not sure how the mother’s of the Leeds and Sheffield Wednesday players felt about their boys slouching away from Elland Road with a point today. A point is better than no points, of course. So I guess you could say it all was a point well taken.
Though maybe not taken well.
(picture not related)
No doubt some of you were finally sighing with relief that no more verbiage had come your way from me. It’s been weeks, decades, centuries no less. But here it is, a post like a speck of static from a distant planet that is now growling across the page as if it were an urgent emergency radio broadcast that has no relevance to anything but itself.
So yes. That’s exactly what this is, and what it has been.
And somewhere, in some distant archive, when this is finally read, nothing will have changed.
Except, perhaps, the brands of beer.
So drink up and have another.
And thank you for today.
