Giles Smith: Standing to reason

A lot can happen in the space of 10 days, so it’s worth briefly recapping the events that occurred following December 6th – which, you will no doubt recall, was that extraordinary, unprecedented and, in some quarters, even dumbfounding day in the 2014/15 season when Chelsea finally got round to losing a Premier League match.

The ensuing Wednesday, with the shockwaves still being felt around the country after our defeat by the odd goal in three away at Newcastle, and with some observers rather eagerly wondering whether this would be the point at which it would ‘all unravel’, we returned to Stamford Bridge to beat Sporting Lisbon 3-1 in a match with nothing riding on it from our point of view (and everything riding on it from the point of view of our opponent’s), merely confirming our qualification for the knock-out stages of the Champions League as group winners, yet confirming it rather emphatically, none the less.

Then, the following Saturday, we played Hull at home and, without breaking very much in the way of sweat other than to jump out of the way of various scything tackles which might otherwise have done certain members of our squad lasting mischief, won 2-0 to maintain our three-point lead at the top of the table.

And then, on Tuesday, we went to Derby where, in the tipping rain, we scored a pair of goals (Eden Hazard’s slapshot, Filipe Luis’s free-kick in the form of a 24-gun salute) which have probably already burned their way onto the showreel for Chelsea TV’s Goal of the Season contest. In the process, we beat the recent Championship leaders 3-1, and advanced in an admirably unflustered manner into the semi-finals of the Capital One Cup.

Accordingly, our record so far this season, accounting for all competitions, reads as follows: Played 25, Lost 1, Drawn 5, Won 19.

Okay, so you could argue that it’s not the form of Real Madrid, whose unblemished run of victories currently stands at 21. But then, unlike Real, we’re not playing in Spain and a high proportion of our matches have brought us up against opponents who are actually quite good. So I would suggest the achievement easily stands comparison, and is possibly even superior in terms of durability, consistency under pressure and… well, winning when it’s really quite hard to do so.

And the loss to Newcastle? Well, it doesn’t seemed to have altered the team’s course very much, by the look of the intervening fortnight. Defeat, you will hear people say, is the furnace in which character is forged - which always sounds grand, although it has never seemed to me a particularly strong argument against avoiding defeat wherever possible and simply deciding to take the hit, character-wise.

Nevertheless, on those inevitable occasions when defeat simply can’t be avoided (up at St James’ Park, for instance, when, convincingly pressing for an equaliser, you’ve just hit the post, only for the opposition to go scampering up the other end, capitalise on a once-in-a-lifetime error by your centre-back and double their lead), the art, clearly, then lies in bouncing back in such a way as to minimise the defeat’s effects.

And three successive victories in three elaborately different sets of circumstance, does go a long way towards reducing it and perhaps even covering its traces over completely. In fact, correct me if I’m wrong, but, a fortnight on, it’s almost like Newcastle never happened.

The two teams we ‘didn’t want’, according to all the analysts, were Juventus and Paris St-Germain. And, when the draw was made, we didn’t get Juventus. But we did get PSG. So, to summarise, we didn’t get what we wanted.

Really? There was a false logic in operation there, surely. Being the two biggest sides that we could possibly have been matched with at this stage of the tournament, and representing measurably the two biggest threats to our continuing presence in Europe, Juventus and PSG were, I would suggest, EXACTLY the kind of sides that we would have hoped to be drawn against. And therefore, like lucky children at Christmas, we did get what we wished for, after all (although, arguably, Juventus would have represented the stiffer challenge, so Santa could have been even kinder).

It stands to reason, doesn’t it? Why be in the Champions League in the first place if, as soon as the competition gets serious, you’re going to cringe and hide and hope to get lucky? After all, there’s plenty of opportunity to cringe and hide and hope to get lucky every year in the Capital One Cup and the FA Cup. We certainly don’t need the Champions League for that. On the contrary, in that context the only sensible post-Christmas attitude is ‘bring on the big guns’.

There’s a time and a place for playing BATE Borisov, in my opinion, and it’s October in the Europa League. Come February, on the other hand, and the knock-out stages of Europe’s elite-level cup competition, you instinctively want it large. You want a big, glossy name on your ticket and the prospect of a big, glossy night ahead of you. Otherwise, what’s the point of it all?

Remember, too, that we didn’t win the Champions League by getting soft draws against Monaco. We won it by taking down a then formidable Napoli side (who brought a 3-1 lead into the second leg), seeing off the legendary and storied Benfica, barging aside an ultra-sophisticated Barcelona and vanquishing the mighty Bayern Munich who (and this should never be under-emphasised) were actually at home in the final, which is about as soft as a draw gets at that stage.

There was immense and eternal pride to be found in that – as, I would suggest, there might not have been (or not to quite the same extent) if our path to permanent glory had gone via Trabzonspor, Dnipro, Red Bull Salzburg and Arsenal at the Emirates.

Similarly the sympathy one has heard being voiced for Manchester City, who have hopped from a frying-pan group-stage into the fire of a two-legged tie against Barca, is entirely misplaced. In the absence of a frying pan, the fire is exactly where anyone who buys into the competition’s true spirit wants to be, so that’s a proper draw, right there. True, it may also be the end of City’s Champions League campaign. But there’s a nobility to be found even in that, because you might as well go down dizzy and in flames trying to contain Lionel Messi as go out on goal difference to Shakhtar Donetsk (no disrespect).

Anyway, may it be the same story for us this time as it was in 2012, or a very similar one: big guns blazing (and preferably getting blazed), all the way. That, after all, is what it’s for. And for everything else, there’s the Capital One.

On the topic of which, congratulations to Liverpool on that shock victory at Bournemouth last night. That was a result which nobody saw coming, and all credit to Brendan Rodgers’s men for having the self-belief, even when under siege in the second half, to ignore the doubters and produce it. 

Note, too, that not everyone has written off Liverpool at this point. Indeed, it’s a mark of the respect Bournemouth were still able to show the struggling Premier League side that, on the night, they put out a side which was only a few players short of full strength.

After that came the draw for the semi-finals, performed, with the traditional sense of balance and objectivity for which televised football is increasingly famous, by two ex-Liverpool players. It was Graeme Souness and Jamie Redknapp who withdrew the balls of destiny from what seemed to be a black motorcycle helmet, possibly requisitioned from a passing pizza delivery man. (You use what you can get your hands on, I guess.) And accordingly, it’s those two who were responsible for getting their former club a tie against a big team in the next round – namely us. But it promises to be quite exciting for us, too, and I'm sure we'll get up for it as best we can.

Giles Smith is a columnist for the official Chelsea FC website and his weekly piece is published every Thursday throughout the season.