Gently Oozing With Pride

Good afternoon.

A gutsy well earned point against the usual vexations of  Secondhand Fridge. Some crummy refereeing and a conveyor belt of petty cheating from a team so screwed up they believe they can manage themselves.

The only criticism was the absence of one touch passing. Our average was three and that buys the other lot time. The midfield was massively congested and neither side seemed capable of challenging that. 

Bale was vastly improved. So was Walker and had Adebayor not spent the entire game fighting for every ball I doubt we’d have taken a point. He was less successful attacking but hey. Them’s the breaks. 

It was a classic Mourinho- esque Cheatski performance and I’m telling you now that a Martin Jol side would have buckled. Crucially Arry’s mob did not and that was the difference out there. Chelsea lacked the killer edge today. From front to back we blunted the knives of  a still very, very dangerous side.

Was it two points dropped because we missed a few gilt edge chances? No. Our recent bad run has generated dozens of reasons to get heated and today we showed what a politician would call some genuine green shoots of recovery.

Player ratings in the morning. To our lot this afternoon I say in the softly spoken words of the young Mr Grace, ‘You’ve all done awfully well.’