This week’s offering from*Preview Percy contains mentions of P45’s, Paqueta and, er Panthers, all of which probably made sense to the old fool when he put this all together. There’s also a bit about Chelsea if you look closely...*
Next up we go on the road to Stamford Bridge where our hosts will be Chelsea. Kick-off is at 5:30 for the benefit of Sky Sports. Rail replacement buses at various sites east of Shenfield again this weekend so keep an eye out if that’s your part of the world.
So Chelsea, then. They are a club who has a new manager every time we play them. Maresca’s expiry date turned out to be New Year’s Eve, with his P45 being delivered on New Year’s Day. After a short spell under the caretakership of Calum McFarlane they brought in Liam Rosenior.
Older readers may remember his Dad Leroy keeping us up with two goals in a 4-1 win over Chelsea back in 1988. The win condemned Chelsea to a promotion/relegation playoff which existed back then , going down to Division 2 after an aggregate defeat to Boro.
Rosenior Junior (which sounds like a contradiction in terms) has had an interesting managerial career, starting as caretaker manager at Derby, taking the reins for a few months after the resignation of Wayne Rooney. After that he pitched up at Hull City where he stayed for a couple of years, getting the sack after missing out on the play-offs.
After Hull it was Strasbourg where he finished 7th in Ligue 1 in his first season. None of that immediately screamed “Premier League manager material”, but for one thing: Strasbourg is part of the BlueCo group which owns Chelsea.
This of course made Rosenior’s transfer somewhat cheaper than it might have been, something of prime importance to a club which has to mess about selling bits of itself to other bits of itself to avoid falling foul of the various rules designed to keep the big boys one step ahead of the poorer teams.
Rosenior has had a fairly good start. After a gentle introduction to things in the form of a 5-1 FA Cup win over Charlton at The Valley, they’ve won two on the spin, beating Brentford 2-0 at home and turning over Palace 3-1 at the death trap. This contrasts with the previous four games under Maresca which went LDDL. All of that has left them in 5th spot with 37 points from the 23 games played so far.
Daisy has been mightily relieved to note that their traditional hoovering up of every player on the market hasn’t taken place so far this window. Indeed the big news so far has been the departure of Raheem Sterling who has had his contract paid off at an agreed discount.
Clearly, the club, whose finances have always smelt a bit iffy going back to the days of Mears, Bates and the Russian Mafia, have been running out of bits of itself to sell to other bits of itself, the hotels having gone last year. Such is the Monopoly board trading that goes on one almost expects their next wriggle to be to sell the “you have won second prize in a beauty contest” card to the holding company for £50m.
So with there being no transfer news to dwell on at time of writing, let’s move on to the Wild & Wacky World Of Association Football. And the CAF have announced a stream of bans and fines against players, coaches and National Associations over the hilarious Cuppasoup Final the other week.
Intriguingly one of the fines was issued to the Moroccan FA over the “inappropriate behaviour of the ball boys” who had been hiding the Senegalese goalie’s towels. Many others were charged with “bringing the game into disrepute”, a charge that had Gianni Infantino looking over the small print over his ludicrous “peace prize”.
Meanwhile the only people to benefit really will be the clubs employing the players on suspension. The suspensions, you see, apply only to the qualifiers for the next Cuppasoup. Which happen this autumn. So all those players signed to European clubs will have a nice rest during the international breaks.
Onto the East Midlands, where Sean Dyche has embarked on another of his campaigns. Having apparently given up on his crusade to stop players diving and rolling about in fake agony, if his Forest side are any indicator, he has moved on to the tyranny of towels. It’s not the towels themselves he has an issue with you understand. It’s the fact that home teams get the choice of whether they get provided for use by long throw specialists. So, to recap, the current Dyche index is Diving – ok now, towels bad.
And so to us. A good win last week, featuring a fine first half – a bit like Tottenham. Two superb goals – albeit in different ways – bookended by a penalty gave us a well-deserved 3-0 lead. I guess when you have a lead that big at the interval getting out of first gear in the second-half must be a bit hard, psychologically speaking. It took a goal with half an hour left to stir us from our post-interval torpor but wouldn’t it be nice if we could play really well in BOTH halves of a game for once.
Obviously there have been a few personnel changes of late. I did find it hard to get over-excited over the signing of Keibar Lamadrid. The lad may, of course, be dynamite but he wouldn’t be the last youngster from South America to arrive and spend a couple of years in our Development squad before disappearing who knows where. Ten out of ten to the boss for his “Keiber passes medical” headline though.
Adama Traore has pitched up for a couple of million. I guess that Traore will be the new Antonio. However, I’m sure I’m not alone in wanting some sort of movement on the central defensive front. Igor has gone back to Brighton for lack of game time so there’s capacity for a loan signing if needed.
James Ward Prowse has gone to Burnley on loan, the good thing about that being that if he does get that elusive record direct free-kick goal it can’t be against us. And of course there was Andy Irving, whose career has one of the oddest CVs you’ll ever see.
His finest hour was his first start for us in last season’s trip to Stamford Bridge where he was granted cult status. “We’re on the pitch if Irving scores” was one of the more memorable chants with a wayward effort from Cole Palmer bringing forth the information that the England international was, in fact, little more than a “poor” Andy Irving” – if you see what I mean.
On the injury front, Paqueta’s “back injury” has, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, turned out to be as honest as a PGMOL press release, and he may well have already left the club by the time this goes out. Which just leaves Fabianski out with a real back injury.
So we move on to the subject of the prediction. This may defy all logic but I have an odd feeling that we can get something out of this game. This will be tempered by the fact that Anthony Taylor is the man in the middle, a self-important official who sees his role as protecting the top six at all costs.
However, a draw might not be out of the question if whoever is on VAR can be persuaded to rein in some of Taylor’s more questionable antics. A long shot I know but what the heck. So with that all in mind, the £2.50 that I was going to sell to myself in order to comply with my bank’s overdraft rules will instead be going on a draw. Make it 1-1 Mr Winstone, if you will!
Enjoy the game!
When last we met at the Money Laundry: Lost 2-1 (Premier League February 2025)
We went 1-0 up before the interval through a Bowen goal, a fine finish coming after he had latched on to a wayward ball. Enter Stuart Atwell who ignored a foul on Bowen and two offsides that were palpably interfering with play to give Chelsea an ill-deserved equaliser. Their winner came off a touchline-bound shot that took a wiked deflection off Wan-Bissaka whilst Kudus missed a number of good chances to give us the point that Atwell had decided we shouldn’t have.
Referee: Anthony Taylor
The worst sort of referee – one who will give controversial decisions for the sake of it so he can see his name in the papers. Will always favour a top 5 and Tottenham side over anyone outside that corrupt little clique.
Danger Man: Joao Pedro
Top scorer so he gets the plaudits this weekend.
Percy and Daisy’s Amazing Chelsea Fact Of The Week Type Thing
I did want to print the story of how Ken Bates once told me in no uncertain term to, ahem, go away, when I encountered him in an official capacity many years ago but unfortunately the details are (genuinely) still covered by the Official Secrets Act.
So instead I will retell the tale of how a few of my Geordie mates, after a few sherberts decided to wind up the Guardian’s “notes and queries” column. They wrote a letter to the Guardian to enquire as to whether anyone remembered panther racing taking place at Stamford Bridge. Even the fact that one of the replies came from “Jack Carter” rang no alarm bells at all with the gullible journos.
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