iHooligan

It’s official. Chelsea take the double after winning the Premier League and now the FA Cup. This is the first time Chelsea have won the double and the 11th time it has happened to a team in the 129 years of the FA Cup.

The  final between Chelsea and Portsmouth was surprisingly contentious with hard fouls and fights almost breaking out. There were no less than two missed penalty kicks by each team and the game’s only goal by Didier Drogba came from a free kick. Certainly was not the pasting that Chelsea gave Wigan last week.

Still, sadly for Pompey they get relegated from the Premier League after a bad season not to mention they are in great financial difficulty.

It is hard to write anything football related with all the grim stories pouring out of the tragic earthquake in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

The AP has reported that at least 30 members of Haiti’s soccer federation have died as a result of the quake.

In another former French colony a small tragedy played itself out last week when the Togo national team had its bus fired on in Angola as they made their way to the African Cup of Nations resulting in three deaths. Togo pulled out of the competition at the behest of their government and later tried to reenter but were denied. One can only hope that doesn’t send a signal to other fans that they can use deadly force to prevent competitors from making it to the event. Togo’s star striker and Manchester City player Emmanuel Adebayor has been traumatized from having his friend and press officer die in his arms and City is unsure when they will see him back in the Premier League again.

Meanwhile Adebayor’s former team Arsenal is in the ascendancy as they rose to the top of the EPL table after beating Bolton 4-2. Chelsea and Manchester United should have been looking over their shoulders.

On a brighter note, Brian Philips has a preview of his new project – something, I think you’ll find, to get excited about.

Wigan v Chelsea 3-1

And that was the sound of Chelsea’s juggernaut status grinding to an abject halt. Wigan managed to get their first ever victory against Chelsea.

Titus Bramble brought Wigan into the lead by heading a corner kick down to the front of the goal line where it bounced in past Cech who was clear on the other side of the goal. Bramble had not scored a goal in ten months.

Early in the second half Drogba brought the score level again with a cross from Malouda and at this point Chelsea fans were probably not worrying much. Oh, good old Chelsea, giving us all heart attacks until that last minute flick into the goal by Drogba, Anelka, or any of other eleven men. Except, Cech was given a red card for tripping Rodallega in his penalty area and off he went despite the kind of Chelsea uproar that would make G20 protester’s seem like wallflowers.

Chelsea were then reduced to nine men as Ashley Cole went off for an injury and all the Blues substitutes had been used at that point.

At 76 minutes Rodallega zoomed in a penalty kick from 25-yards and another Wigan goal was scored in stoppage time when Scharner punched in a cross from Figueroa. There will certainly be some celebrating in Northwest England tonight.

For a full match report just google ‘Premier League nuclear meltdown or Screams of agony and despair heard in West London.’

Chelsea v Burnley 3-0

Like an old car on a winter morning Chelsea took a little time to warm up but when they did it was with all the rumble of a V-8 engine. At first they looked to score early on. Anelka ran at the Burnley goal with only Brian Jensen, the Burnley goal keep, in his way. And he ran at him and ran at him and then tripped over Jensen; Anelka probably thinking about the reclamation of space and time and other cotemporary ideas in landscaping theory. It was a good save by Jensen.

Burnley had an amazing chance 9 minutes in when Martin Patterson received a cross that left him with Cech slightly out of position but Patterson must have panicked a little and shot very wide.

Chelsea built a campfire in the Burnley box but it was a campfire they kept tripping over at first.

In added time Drogba zipped up the right side and crossed over into the box where Anelka, not at all lost in thought this time, slid the ball into the goal along with himself.

Right after the break Ballack headed in a pass from Lampard bring the score to 2-0. And right after that Cole had a short pass to Lampard in the Burnley box and Lampard passed it right back to him and Cole punched the ball in for a third goal (his third goal ever for Chelsea). Chelsea had scored 3 goals in 7 minutes.

Despite all that Jensen proved to be a terrific goal keeper since Chelsea made over 20 shots at the goal. Jensen, despite having a boyish, questioning look on his face at all times is called The Beast by Burnley fans (although not as incessantly as the match commentators; “The only thing in the way of the Chelsea feast is The Beast” – thank you ESPN). To his credit he never appeared shaken or lost. Jensen had the visage of a young miner – this is what we do – go down into the dark maw and we dig. Stalwart goal keeper.

The good news for Chelsea fans is that Drogba and Anelka are definitely able to work together this season unlike last where they appeared to occupy alternate dimensions when on the pitch together.

Chelsea v Hull City 2-1

It was a nice start to the season. This game moved and never got bogged down anywhere on the pitch. Hull City, some of its players mere hours with the team, certainly didn’t stand there waiting for Chelsea to slap them around. Chelsea  retained a lot of the possession but squandered many chances at the Hull goal. Hull actually appeared dangerous every time they got close to Chelsea’s goal.

At almost 11 minutes in, Anelka had the ball in front of the Hull goal and appeared to pause, possibly thinking of pulling out the book Three-Dimensional Velocity and Vorticity Measuring and Image Analysis Techniques: Lecture Notes from the Short Course held in Zürich, Switzerland, 3-6 September 1996 by Th. Dracos, and think on his next step while a pair of stumbling and probably slightly confused Hull City defenders relieved him of the ball.

This was about the only moment that the match slowed down. Hull had a few shots at the Chelsea goal and then in the 27th minute Stephen Hunt, who had only been with Hull for 48 hours, shot a deflection from Obi Mikel into Chelsea’s net as the camera closed in on Carlo Ancelotti’s withering look. Hunt has few fans at Stamford Bridge and the booing was audible since he was the player in the Chelsea v Reading match in 2006 whose knee gave Cech a skull fracture.

Less than ten minutes later Drogba scored a beautiful penalty kick after having missed a boatload of shots at goal, arcing the ball over the Hull defenders where it made an emergency landing in the Hull City goal bringing the game to 1-1. Abramovich was giving out free high fives in the stands.

Just before the second half Malouda got blown across the turf by Bernard Mendy and rolled all the way to the betting advertisements and might have kept on rolling had the stands not been there. Mendy picked up the first yellow card of the new Premier League season.

The game did not slow down at all in the second half although most of it was spent in front of Hull’s goal – Chelsea constantly pounding the ball from no distance while Hull defenders kept clearing it only to have it come right back again. Hull had another chance in front of the Chelsea goal but all the players on both sides appeared to spontaneously fall down and the ball was escorted out by Essien.

Barmby kicked Ashley Cole right between the shoulder blades and possibly received the second yellow card of the season. In the next ten minutes Deco came on for Malouda, Geovanni for Mendy and Kalou for Anelka.

Chelsea was living in the Hull goal to the point where they could have gone to Ikea and picked out furniture for it but with ten minutes left the score remained 1-1. Que brooding, despondent shots of Roman Abramovich. Hull’s Michael Turner preserved the tie in the 90th minute by blocking a shot from Carvalho.

Then in the 91st minute Drogba chipped the ball into the goal from an acute angle (although perhaps Andrey Arshavin has permanently redefined acute). The game went to 97 minutes and 13 seconds before the final whistle was blown.

Chelsea still need to work on their finishing moves and Hull showed that they weren’t going to be pushovers despite not winning their last 23 games in the previous season. The Tigers could provide some entertaining matches for their fans this season while Chelsea seem determined to make their fans lose weight by sweating them until last minute goals are scored.

Every club has a twelfth man; pacing up and down the touchline, red-faced and predatory, either shouting hoarsely or gesticulating wildly, caught in throes of anger and frustration or sitting moribund and cadaver-like on the bench or with a profoundly smug, satisfied look on their face. They wear business suits, track suits, club jerseys, they are swallowed up in puffy, all-encompassing jackets more suited for a climb up Everest (however appropriate for some, for many). Sometimes their arms are bare to the elements, their faces as passive as a buddha or in a rictus grimace of agony. They punch their fists at the sky and gesture toward the earth in an atavistc dance. They extend a damning index finger toward the players on the pitch. Their hair grays visibly before the TV cameras. They are the generals, the master tacticians or the floundering victims. They are the managers. Whatever the case, the manager is the twelfth man of every team.

So it is with no small amount of irony that on their Stateside website Chelsea is looking for a 12th man, a promotion for a fan to win a spot on the Chelsea bench during their US tour. What they really need is a manager. One who can stay.

And the longevity of the manager all comes down to Roman Abramovich.

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