Some old rituals never lose their magic. It doesn’t matter how many times they come around, nor how same-y they are in essence, they still gladden the heart and charm us all over again. Christmas, for example. And not losing to Tottenham at home in the league.
As people are forever pointing out, the last time Tottenham beat Chelsea at the Bridge in a league game, Gary Lineker was still a footballer and you could get one of his packets of Walkers crisps for a penny-ha’penny and still have change for the trolley-bus home.
And, of course, human nature being what it is, every year you go along to the ground thinking, ‘Will this, finally, be the one? Will this, at last, be the time that Spurs end this extraordinary, unprecedented run of fruitlessness and, for the first time since everyone in the crowd wore hats and stood around in black and white, go home with the points?’ And every time it isn’t. Last night being no exception.
It almost makes you feel sorry for our north London neighbours. They aren’t just playing us in this fixture, they are also playing the history of the British Isles. Sure enough, last night they started enthusiastically enough but within 20 minutes or so they were suddenly 2-0 and 24 years down.
That’s always going to be dispiriting. And long may it continue. Same goes for Christmas.
How was the new light-show for you? Just before the players emerged from the tunnel last night, the floodlights were dipped, the hoardings around the pitch glowed bright blue and a heart-beat came pumping through the PA system. All courtesy of those new LED light bulbs of ours, which can be flicked on and off, unlike the old ones, which were powered by a complex system of hamsters on treadmills and therefore took a little while to warm up.
Maybe you had to be there. The thing is, if I had seen the plan written down on a piece of paper beforehand, I would probably have thought it was a terrible idea and turned my nose up against it as high as my nose would go. Artificial atmosphere in the stadium? Surely that’s a close relative of piping in music after goals, which would have to sit extremely high on the list of the very worst ideas that anyone ever had in the vicinity of a football ground.
As it happened, though, I thought it was brilliant - an enhancer rather than a detractor, a complement to the atmosphere that was already there, and probably quite a kick for the players, who got to walk out into these theatrical pools of light with the rest of the ground in darkness.
Shades, in fact, of the eerie aftermath of our 2005 Carling Cup victory in Cardiff, where the lights were dimmed for the trophy presentation and which I can still become quite shuddery thinking about even now.
So I’m all in favour of this new night-game curtain-raiser. It’s probably against Champions League rules, so I don’t know when we’ll see it again. But I’m already looking forward to it.
No music when we score, though. We must never let that happen. It’s up to all of us to unite against the notion if anyone so much as mentions it.
According to a theory advanced by the BBC Sport website the other day, it’s all the Champions League’s fault. The 0-0 draw at Sunderland, I mean. Keen-eyed statisticians noted that each of the three matches in which our team has failed to take the full complement of points on offer in a Premier League fixture this season has occurred during the weekend directly following a match in Europe. The conclusion was drawn that post-European fatigue must have been a factor. Well, maybe. On the other hand, we have played in the Champions League five times so far.
Which means (if I’m doing the maths correctly) that, as well as the three occasions on which there was a subsequent faltering, there were two occasions on which there wasn’t.
Indeed, on one of those two occasions when there wasn’t, we returned from Europe, went up to Liverpool about 10 minutes later, in a match which the schedulers weren’t even prepared to postpone until Sunday, or even Saturday evening, in accordance with the normal courtesy extended to Champions League contenders, and won 2-1.
And even though beating Liverpool at Anfield doesn’t quite bring the glowing sense of achievement that it once did, in the days when the coalman still drove around on a horse and cart and when Liverpool were still a big club whose ground was a genuinely intimidating place to go, that still felt like a decent enough achievement at the time, in the circumstances and given that some of our players were still clearing customs three minutes before the game kicked off. On the other of those two occasions, by the way, we came back from Lisbon to beat Arsenal at home. Again, I know: not the force they once were. But still not a bad result.
Also, let’s not forget that the places where we drew in the wake of European action this season were Manchester City, Manchester United and Sunderland. And okay, it might just about be reasonable to talk about ‘dropping points’ at the Stadium of Light, but surely it would be only patronising and presumptuous to speak of ‘dropping points’ at the Etihad and even at Old Trafford, which are places where a draw is a perfectly respectable outcome, and may even be regarded as a ‘point earned’.
Especially when your ‘point earned’ would have been three points if it hadn’t been for (respectively), an own goal by Frank Lampard and a desperate last-minute hack in the face of an unfortunately depleted defence by Robin van Persie.
Anyway, let’s say there is a recognisable phenomenon called ‘a Champions League hangover’; and let’s say our team has been in the grip of it on three out of five occasions so far this season. Even then it seems to me to be a reasonable trade-off.
Would you rather not be in Europe at all, like Manchester United, and 12 points clear at the top of the table, 16 points clear of the team in third place, and 19 points better off than Liverpool?
Or would you prefer to be (as we are) through to the qualifying stages of the Champions League, having finished top of the group with a game to spare, and ‘merely’ six points clear at the top of the table, 10 points clear of the team in third place and 13 points better off than Liverpool?
Surely any reasonable person has to be prepared to take the rough with the smooth and, accordingly, it’s the latter for me.
Giles Smith is a columnist for the official Chelsea FC website and his weekly piece is published every Thursday throughout the season.
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