Matt the Shrimp
aka Harry Potter
It pretty much wrote itself this week.....
Slipperduke's Slippery Column #12
I've got a massive problem today. It's not just the fact that I've spent five hours in the freezing cold queuing for non-existent tickets to Southend's League Cup clash with Manchester United. Well, actually, it is mainly that. But if I wrote purely about my inability to get tickets for my club's biggest game in almost 30 years, this column would be 750 sweary words of self-recrimination and neither you nor I want that, do we?
In amongst my five hours of shivering and weeping at the bitter injustice of it all, I read several different reports of Chelsea's late, late draw in Barcelona. And it's bugging me now; I just can't decide whether Jose Mourinho is a public relations genius or if we, as football fans, are just spectacularly stupid.
Every time Chelsea come up against an opponent that might actually cause them some damage, Mourinho calmly hurls a metaphorical stun-grenade into the public arena and we all wander around in circles, blinking like startled children. It getting a bit boring now, but it continues to pay dividends for him. Should I be impressed or insulted?
Let's look at the evidence. After a shaky start in the Premiership, Chelsea had to contend with the visit of Liverpool, who were then considered to be challengers for the title. Instead of allowing the press to dwell on his team's unconvincing start, Mourinho shifted the agenda to his own relationship with Rafa Benitez. The press corps, sensing some juice, spent the rest of the afternoon pressing him on that all-important issue; would he be shaking hands with his opposite number before the game?
Let's just look at that again. The back-to-back, invincible Premiership champions crash to defeat at Middlesbrough, then face a tough tie with Liverpool and Mourinho gets everyone talking about a handshake!
I've spoken to sources within the Chelsea camp this season and they've said that the Chelsea management were 'paranoid' about the first Champions League clash with Barcelona. The word was, there was to be no word. No-one in the club was going to comment on that game and certainly no-one was going to mention the bad blood that had built up ever since the Anders Frisk incident. Jose Mourinho made sure that no-one had to.
Just a day after two of his goalkeepers had been injured in a clash with Reading, Mourinho was in front of the cameras again. This time he was complaining vociferously about the delay in getting an ambulance to the seriously injured Petr Cech.
"How can he say that?" wailed the tabloids. "Why does he want to cause trouble again?" They never stopped to think that perhaps it was to make sure that, once again, all the focus was on him and not his team. In the lead-up to that Barcelona game, all the headlines, all the tirades in the newspapers, were about him. His players could prepare in silence, safe from the glare of the unforgiving spotlight.
Thanks to his most recent assertion that Eidur Gudjohnson must have learnt how to dive in his short-time at Barcelona, no-one looked at his players before the return game at the Nou Camp either. They all delighted themselves by screeching about his double standards, by pointing to Didier Drogba's uncanny inability to stay on his feet if the wind changes direction.
No-one stopped to ask where on earth Frank Lampard's form has vanished to in the last nine months. No-one pushed him for comments on £30 million Andriy Shevchenko and his paltry return of two goals in nine games. No-one was trying to put pressure on the third-choice goalkeeper, the wonderfully monikered Hilario.
He'd done it again.
By relentlessly making himself the subject of every negative headline, by selflessly taking the slings and arrows of outrageous editorials, he has created a barb-proof bubble for his expensively assembled charges.
Why do we continue to fall for it? And, damn it, why can't I get a ticket for a Southend game?
Slipperduke's Slippery Column #12
I've got a massive problem today. It's not just the fact that I've spent five hours in the freezing cold queuing for non-existent tickets to Southend's League Cup clash with Manchester United. Well, actually, it is mainly that. But if I wrote purely about my inability to get tickets for my club's biggest game in almost 30 years, this column would be 750 sweary words of self-recrimination and neither you nor I want that, do we?
In amongst my five hours of shivering and weeping at the bitter injustice of it all, I read several different reports of Chelsea's late, late draw in Barcelona. And it's bugging me now; I just can't decide whether Jose Mourinho is a public relations genius or if we, as football fans, are just spectacularly stupid.
Every time Chelsea come up against an opponent that might actually cause them some damage, Mourinho calmly hurls a metaphorical stun-grenade into the public arena and we all wander around in circles, blinking like startled children. It getting a bit boring now, but it continues to pay dividends for him. Should I be impressed or insulted?
Let's look at the evidence. After a shaky start in the Premiership, Chelsea had to contend with the visit of Liverpool, who were then considered to be challengers for the title. Instead of allowing the press to dwell on his team's unconvincing start, Mourinho shifted the agenda to his own relationship with Rafa Benitez. The press corps, sensing some juice, spent the rest of the afternoon pressing him on that all-important issue; would he be shaking hands with his opposite number before the game?
Let's just look at that again. The back-to-back, invincible Premiership champions crash to defeat at Middlesbrough, then face a tough tie with Liverpool and Mourinho gets everyone talking about a handshake!
I've spoken to sources within the Chelsea camp this season and they've said that the Chelsea management were 'paranoid' about the first Champions League clash with Barcelona. The word was, there was to be no word. No-one in the club was going to comment on that game and certainly no-one was going to mention the bad blood that had built up ever since the Anders Frisk incident. Jose Mourinho made sure that no-one had to.
Just a day after two of his goalkeepers had been injured in a clash with Reading, Mourinho was in front of the cameras again. This time he was complaining vociferously about the delay in getting an ambulance to the seriously injured Petr Cech.
"How can he say that?" wailed the tabloids. "Why does he want to cause trouble again?" They never stopped to think that perhaps it was to make sure that, once again, all the focus was on him and not his team. In the lead-up to that Barcelona game, all the headlines, all the tirades in the newspapers, were about him. His players could prepare in silence, safe from the glare of the unforgiving spotlight.
Thanks to his most recent assertion that Eidur Gudjohnson must have learnt how to dive in his short-time at Barcelona, no-one looked at his players before the return game at the Nou Camp either. They all delighted themselves by screeching about his double standards, by pointing to Didier Drogba's uncanny inability to stay on his feet if the wind changes direction.
No-one stopped to ask where on earth Frank Lampard's form has vanished to in the last nine months. No-one pushed him for comments on £30 million Andriy Shevchenko and his paltry return of two goals in nine games. No-one was trying to put pressure on the third-choice goalkeeper, the wonderfully monikered Hilario.
He'd done it again.
By relentlessly making himself the subject of every negative headline, by selflessly taking the slings and arrows of outrageous editorials, he has created a barb-proof bubble for his expensively assembled charges.
Why do we continue to fall for it? And, damn it, why can't I get a ticket for a Southend game?
