At the very end of Chelsea’s 2-1 home defeat against Aston Villa, which would prove to be Enzo Maresca’s penultimate match in charge of the Blues, a (full) water bottle was thrown from the Chelsea dugout in the direction of the Aston Villa dugout. At least it’s presumed to have been thrown rather than apparate as some sort of interdimensional artifact as we all attempted to travel back in time to when things were a bit less silly in the SW6.
Though it did not actually strike anyone, the plastic bottle was apparently “travelling at speed” and passed “very close” to a head of an Aston Villa bench player before landing in the dugout. The incident, citing second-hand information, was noted in the referee’s report and Chelsea were subsequently charged by The FA for a breach of Rule E20.1, failing to ensure that “directors, players, officials, employees, servants and representatives, attending any match do not behave in a way which is improper, offensive, violent, threatening, abusive, indecent, insulting or provocative”.
Chelsea did not contest the charge, but despite all the witnesses and video evidence, the perpetrator was never identified by either the club or The FA — lending further credence to my temporal rift theory. Did anyone test for any tachyon emissions?
Since breaching E20 is a fairly regular occurrence at this club (though not quite as common as it used to be), and since this specific incident was considered “non-standard”, the fine would come out to be a rather hefty £150k. Sounds like a lot, but still a ways off the record £375k (reduced to £290k on appeal) that we got after The Battle of The Bridge now almost ten years ago!