Has our season suddenly imploded once again based on 45 minutes of football at Stamford Bridge last Saturday evening?
Has the hope and long overdue optimism we garnered from three consecutive victories – together with a highly impressive first 45 minutes in west London – putting one of the most expensively assembled teams in the Premier League to the sword in front of their own disbelieving fans – suddenly dissolved away based on a 92nd minute goal which denied us at least a deserved point for our efforts?
At 6.20pm on Saturday, the army of keyboard warriors who love to give us a blow-by-blow account of their thoughts and observations – a sort of throwback to the days of watching games unfold via Teletext – were besides themselves riding on a wave of optimism.
By 7.30pm their mood had changed dramatically. Instead of clamouring for heroes to laud over they were in full flight searching for villains to blame for a dramatic turnaround. In their eyes we’d gone from “We are staying up” to “going down, going down, going down…” in less than an hour. Completely ignoring the fact that very few of those self-same experts had given us any chance of getting anything from that game anyway.
Top of the list of villains was of course Max Kilman. I’m no apologist for our big number 3 – how could anyone be, with the kind of form he’s been in this season? But were those three killer second half goals all down to him?
Nuno of course is Head Coach, the man who had thrown Kilman into the bull pit, so there was more than a fair share of criticism heading his way, too. I’m not making a case for him either – he’s big enough to stand up for himself. But he made a call based on the changes Liam Rosenior made at half time – which was the real reason the match turned on its head.
I’m not sure what our fanbase’s reaction would have been had Nuno, chasing a 2-0 deficit, put on two new defenders and then made a like-for-like swap up top, one striker off another striker on! My guess is they wouldn’t have been happy. Far from it in fact – and they would have let us know! But it worked for Rosenior and against Nuno and the rest, as they say, is history.
So is our season really now dead in the water after defeat in the battle of Stamford Bridge? Is there really no hope left as some would have us believe?
We have all seen an upsurge in confidence from the team in recent weeks. The goals from Crysencio Summerville, the industry, artistry and shooting power from Mateus Ferenandes. The signs of Jarrod Bowen returning to the form we know he has – plus the contributions to the team from our new duo up front Taty Castellanos and Pablo Felipe. Arguable it’s the spark from their arrival which has ignited our recent form.
Nuno’s dealings have given the club and us fans hope. A chance that looked a very long way off when his players made a forlorn exit from the Molineux pitch at the beginning of January. He’s also given the Chairman a chance some might argue he doesn’t deserve to save the club from what could be a financially disastrous relegation.
And what has the wee man given back in return? As far as I can see he threw Nuno under the bus with his comments, via his usual mouthpiece, with regard to wanting Lucas Paqueta to stay when we all knew the drawn out saga was all really about squeezing more money out of the Brazilians. And he was at it again claiming the head coach was the reason for a lack of action on bringing in a new defender because he was ‘undecided’ on who to go for.
Does anyone believe that? No, me neither!
The loss of one or all three points against Chelsea won’t be the deciding factor in our season! But there is a massive point to prove and three equally massive points to be won at Burnley on Saturday. The Clarets aren’t Chelsea. They don’t have a bench to call on dripping in transfer fees. Scott Parker can’t turn to players costing in the region of £60m each as Rosenior did and tell them to go and win the game.
Earlier this season we put three goals past Burnley to take the points and that was at a time when we were playing nowhere near as well and confidently as we have in recent weeks.
With the bleak Lancashire hills looming in the background and the wind blowing around a draughty Turf Moor on a cold February day, it won’t be an easy place to go and play. But the task certainly isn’t beyond us in our present form.
Burnley suffered a disappointing reverse themselves at the Stadium of Light on Monday. Like West Ham they had three goals put past them – but that was a game they were never in, far from our reverse on Saturday.
With new signing Axel Disasi likely to be on the bench, at least to start with, Nuno’s job will be to get his team playing on the front foot from the start, the way they did against Tottenham, Sunderland and Chelsea. Achieve that and we can banish the disappointment of that traumatic second half at Stamford Bridge and get back to the winning ways we’re all desperate to see.
Amusing footnote to last Saturday: Adama Traore, whose move to the London Stadium was greeted with far from universal approval, seems to have won himself something of cult status based purely on his 10-minute cameo, and more particularly his fearsome encounter with first Marc Cucurella and then Joao Pedro. Who was it who said “Football is a funny old game”?
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