No Complaints

All in all we didn’t really have any cause to complain about Wilfred Bony’s transfer to Manchester City, at least for the rest of this season. How UEFA will allow Manchester City to balance their books is none of our concern but what the transfer did give us was a considerably weakened Swansea team to use as shooting practice for the tougher games ahead. 5-0 away from home IS a big scoreline even by our superb standards.

The home side looked totally lost against a resurgent Chelsea without their big man to provide them with a target upfront. Granted that Chelsea offered them little space to maneuver but what did they have to gain going forward anyway? Gomis is a decent striker but he is not the 1 you choose to lead your attack if you are trying to get past the second best defence in the league. And Bony’s national assignment with Ivory Coast at the AFCON means we don’t have any bony business till next season.

So no reason to complain at all.

After the Spurs game on the New Year the media everywhere were making honest mistakes in finding adjectives to describe the 5-3 defeat. I recall thrashing was used. And mauling. I think some pieces that I nearly didn’t read used massacred. So as benevolent as Chelsea is we had to educate them on what game you can describe with those words hence the performance at the Liberty Stadium. Funny enough they don’t seem to think this game deserves those monstrous words too. One paper used “near-perfect”.

No complains there too.

Costa and Oscar bagged a brace each on Saturday

It took 58 mins for the Van Gaal to understand that maybe he needs to pay attention to the United fans. Before then the team was playing the infamous 3-5-2, Di Maria was playing as a striker and Phil Jones was taking the corner kicks. What exactly goes on in this man’s head is up for debate for those of us who cant read minds but from what we could read from the game, it looks pretty much like he wanted to be a magician but turned to football when he could not pronounce “Abrakadabra”.

The 3-5-2 does not work for United no matter how pretty it may be. And its not pretty too. It leaves your back-line stretched when your wing backs cant get into position in time. It leaves your midfield crowded which cuts out much needed space for your playmakers. United spent all that huge money in the summer buying players that will fit into this system but it is just not working. This is a traditional team that has 4-4-2 written in their genetic code and anyone who can change them to fit into a formation that is mostly unfamiliar, not for United alone but the BPL in general, must be one hell of a magician.

Louis Van Gaal on the United bench

How long did it take for Arsene Wenger to understand that you cant play every game the same way against every team? A very long time I must say and arent we all glad that he has? Sunday’s win at the Etihad was just about the biggest performance they have put on since they won at the Allianz Arena and that much was just a formality for the Germans. On Sunday, Arsenal were more than happy to let City do all the huffing and puffing but made the most of the ball when they had it and that is how to play against the big teams away from home, especially in Europe.

Manchester City have now not won a single premier league match without Yaya Toure since April last year. Now how about that for dependency? City played well on Sunday and were undone by that penalty but even with Aguero and Silva on you could still feel them lacking that extra swagger that they normally have and Arsenal capitalized on that. They face Chelsea at Stamford Bridge next. How will they fair without their big man at a grounds that is naturally for all teams? In previous meetings Jose Mourinho has always tasked Nemanja Matic to do a job on Toure. With him absent the Serbian will have all the time in the world for Silva and that will only be to our benefit.

Yaya Toure and Matic battles for the ball

So tough luck to City when we meet but tonight all eyes are focused on Anfield where we meet Liverpool in the Capital One cup semi-final 1^st leg. This will be a wonderful match. It always is with Chelsea-Liverpool in cup games. I think a draw wont be bad for the Scousers.

See you at Anfield blues.

FIFA RONALD'OR

It is nice to finally post again after what has been a very lengthy break. I really decided to endulge myself in last years festivities and it took me longer than I anticipated to get back but I am back and I want to wish each and every cherished reader of this blog a very Happy New year as late as it is.

So straight to the hottest topic of the day which is the FIFA Ballon d'Or which will be given out this evening and the announcement of the FIFPRO eleven.

Now the FIFA Ballon d'Or is an association football award given annually to the male player who is considered to have performed the best in the previous year from November 30, 2013 to November 21, 2014. It is awarded based on votes by coaches and captains of international teams, as well as journalists from around the world. And the shortlisted 3 for this year are C. Ronaldo, Lionel Messi and Manuel Neuer.

We all know Mr. Neuer is there to add to the numbers and also help FIFA appease the Germans who painstakingly won the World Cup in Brazil but its a known fact that he couldn't possibly win it ahead of the other 2. Such is their dominance in world football. If Wesley Sneider could not win it ahead of them in 2010 considering the season he had it is understandable why Neuer will not get close.

That leaves Messi and Ronaldo and I must admit that considering the season both had in 2014 I am surprised by the argument from the Messi camp.

Dont want to bore you with the statistics but this is a year in which Ronaldo outscored Messi and won more trophies and personal accolades than him. Messi played in the World Cup final and won the golden ball but Neuer actually won the trophy and won the golden gloves. Ronaldo in fact played in 3 finals and won all 3.

All these arguments would not have bothered until Messi became the all time leading scorer in both the la liga and the Champions league. Admiral achievement but in my opinion not worthy of determining who wins an award that is given for achievements in a single year.

If Barcelona fans think making those records should be rewarded the best thing to do will be to award him a life time something because that is what those records are. Achieved throughout a lifetime of football.

Only one player deserve to be crowned the world best in 2014 tonight and that is Cristiano Ronaldo.

A Wonderful 2015

I still don't really know what to make of the festive fixtures. Was it a success when we played away to Stoke ( Arsenal lost there), Southampton and Tottenham, and only 1 home fixture against our neighbours West Ham and picked up 7pts out of a possible 12? Or was it a disappointing one starting the new year dead level with Manchester City and only leading by alphabetical arrangements after leading by 8pts?

The team did an amazing work at the Britannia and against West Ham at home, which was expected. Southampton had their plan and almost succeeded but for the brilliance of Eden Hazard to get us the equalizer. The game at White Hart Lane was just an anomaly. It's that simple. We know it, they know it, Phil Dowd knows it and incidentally, Barcelona (who managed to tweet that they have nothing to do on their break but follow Chelsea scores) also knows. Cheers mate.

The simple truth is that those 7pts were hard-fought for at very difficult grounds and it could have been worse had our rivals from Manchester had the balls to maintain a 2-goal lead against Burnley. So it really wasn't the worst results we've had over the festive period, if you can ask Andre Villas Boas, so we look ahead to a wonderful 2015.

And just a week later things are looking better. We are 2 pts and +2 goals ahead, Diego Costa is leading the golden boot race again, Cesc Fabregas has almost forgotten he is competing for the assist king, we only have the Emirates waiting as the only tough grounds left in the league and we are still competing in all competitions.

It really will be a wonderful 2015.

How on earth did Luis Van Gaal manage to fool us all that he has been a better manager than David Moyes for Manchester United?

We know Moyes broke some unnecessary records at United, allowing some teams who normally came to just surrender at Old Trafford have the hope of winning, but the last time Southampton won there was in January 1988 before the Premier League was born.

After last weekend's match we know Van Gaal has not really fared any better than his predecessor. After playing the same number of matches (21) both managers had 37pts from a possible 63. Moyes actually had more wins (11 to 10) and more goals (35 to 34) than Van Gaal.

What Van Gaal has managed to do is lose less, draw more and string together 6 straight victories. Oh and he has United at 4th compared to Moyes' 7th at the same stage, but we all know that is largely due to the Merseysiders forgetting how to win this season.

So Louis van Gaal has not actually bettered the team from last season. Rooney is still the main man, Van Persie is wasting the chances he is being given ahead of Falcao and the team is crap without Fletcher. All this with an over £200M spending.

Question is; how did he fool us?

WINNERS AT 2014 BALLON D'OR GALA IN ZURICH

Ballon d'Or: Cristiano Ronaldo
Women's world player of the year: Nadine Kessler
Puskas award: James Rodriguez
World coach of the year for men's football: Joachim Low
World coach of the year for women's football: Ralf Kellermann
World XI: Neuer; Lahm, Ramos, David Luiz, Thiago Silva; Di Maria, Iniesta, Kroos; Messi, Ronaldo, Robben
FIFA presidential award: Hiroshi Kagawa
FIFA fair play award: FIFA volunteers

And this is what the man had to say after winning:
'I can see my mother, my family. I would like to thank all those who voted for me. My coach, my fellow player, the President of my club.

'It's been an unforgettable year. To win this trophy, a trophy of this kind, is something unique and all I can say is I want to continue working as I have so far, trying to go on to more titles - individual and as a team - for my mother, my father who is up there looking at me and my son.'

'I want to get better as the days go by. I want to say to all the Portuguese that I never thought I could win this trophy on three different occasions. Of course it is something that is always with me, I want to become one of the greatest players of all time, and this requires a lot so I would like to thank you for all this evening.'

He is the best player in the world.
Congratulations

And this is how England manager Roy Hodgson voted; 1) Mascherano 2) Lahm 3) Neuer.

How could a man be so off target with 3 chances?

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.

Falling Into Place

I suggested last week that losing to Newcastle away was not all doom and gloom as it could be the beginning of better things and last week the team showed that it was ready to begin another winning streak.

Right now it stands at P 2 W 2 D 0 L 2

4 nil and 2 nil wins at home is hardly big news compared to some of our best performances this season but these kind of results is what breeds the kind of confidence needed to start another run.

It looks like everything is falling into place for us just at the right time. We have deliberately lost to lift the unneeded pressure of the boys and whether by coincidence or some twist of faith, we've managed to let 3 of our most influential players to serve their time for suspensions to get them available for the most busy and exciting period of the season.

Diego Costa was first then Matic against Newcastle. Our midfield maestro and assist leader  in the BPL Cesc Fabregas was also suspended for the Hull City game. Now all of them will be available for the festive games which comes almost every 2 days till mid - January next year.

With the team now officially participating in 4 competitions after the FA cup draw it was lovely to see the manager mix up the team and for us to witness a debut for Rueben Loftus-Cheek. But more importantly, it was great to see them produce the kind of performance they did on Wednesday in the CL.

Schurlle for instance had been hitting low keys for the team this season since he came back from the World Cup but he looked himself on Wednesday and capped a fine performance with a goal. All the players are staying sharp and ready to compete for the team and that can only be to the benefit of the team.

When Chelsea eliminated PSG from the Champions league last season their official twitter handle wrote that they shall be back and lo and behold, here they are. Right in the middle of the road blocking our path to CL glory. But I bet they didn't put into consideration the fact that they will be meeting a much improved and super high on confidence Chelsea.

They really put up a fight the last time beating us 3-1 in Paris and we could only go through on goal difference putting our vastly superior experience in the competition to use. But things are different now. We play at a different stage of the competition with a better team and against David Luiz whom we will love to beat. So if PSG tells us they are back our answer is simple.

Bring it on.

Giles Smith - The Truth Is Out There

It wasn’t only a sprightly performance that caught columnist and season ticket holder Giles Smith’s eye as he watched last night’s win…

Remember losing? I’d almost completely forgotten about it. And not surprisingly really. I’m pretty sure that the last time it happened, milk still came in glass bottles.

But that was before last Saturday, of course, and that slightly surprising result at Newcastle, the pointless aftermath of which, inevitably, brought back a few distant memories, not all of them entirely pleasant. That said, once the initial gloom had begun to lift,

I personally was quite relieved to have got a defeat on the board at long last. The talk of a possible ‘invincible’ season (none of it ever coming from Chelsea fans, incidentally) had started up, ridiculously, as early as October, and was just beginning to get irksome. Given a little longer, it clearly had the potential to become a major distraction, possibly even a ruinous one from the point of view of our greater aims.

Going through a league season undefeated, quietly leaving aside defeats in cup competitions, and then awarding yourself the label ‘invincible’ – correct me if I’m wrong, but this was never part of the gameplan for 2014/15, which set its sights on more dignified things, such as trying to win all the available competitions, rather than on a nerdy, fact-checker’s interest in unblemished records. It would have been entirely unrealistic in any case.

I realise that Arsenal did it in 2003/04, but the Premier League was a less complicated place in those days, bearing no resemblance to the collection of variously terrifying banana skins which constitute the top flight of English football today.

Indeed, back then, the Premiership was only just beginning to emerge from a period in which a drawn-out two-club stranglehold (Arsenal and Manchester United) had drawn unfavourable and even mocking comparisons with the situation in Scottish football.

In any case, let’s face it, never losing leads only to stagnation and complacency. Better, surely, to enjoy the rejuvenating effect of the occasional (preferably extremely occasional) defeat and convert it, say, into a spritely, born-again 3-1 victory over Sporting Lisbon in the following match (impressively spritely, given that the match was, from our players' point of view, a dead rubber) and, for preference, something similar at home to Hull on Saturday.

Remember bouncing back? It follows logically that that, too, is a distant memory round these parts. But I don’t think any of us would mind being reminded.

For a very long time now this column has been interested in discovering what those additional UEFA goal-line officials actually do of an evening. I suppose, in a way, it’s become a bit of an obsession – a life’s work, you could almost say.

But it’s just a feeling we have that, if we ever did find out what officials number five and six are up to out there, standing quite near the goals on these European evenings, and if we wrote those findings up in words right here, it would give us the satisfaction of feeling that this column handmade a contribution, however modest, to the sum of human knowledge.

Because nobody else seems to know what those people are for either. This is clearly a new frontier for scientific understanding and whoever gets there first is going to be acclaimed for all time as a pioneer and ground-breaker – the person who first cracked the code and explained to the world the point of the goal line official.

Unfortunately, despite having devoted many hours of close scrutiny to those extra assistants, and having thought extremely hard about their potential function at every moment available, the most plausible explanation we have been able to find for them up to now is: ‘somewhere to hang your coat.’

Which isn’t bad, at this stage of the investigation as early conclusions go. It may well be part of the truth. But my instincts as an experimental scientist tell me it’s not the whole truth, which is what we’re really after.

You’ll understand how excited we became last night, then, during the second half, when – in a development which we believe was unprecedented, certainly in our own experience – the goal line official at the Shed End actively summoned the referee over to him in order to have some kind of consultation.

This was rare: you very rarely see those extra people make a meaningful move or communicate with anyone else connected with the match in any way at all. This has led in some quarters to the theory that the goal line officials are, in fact, cyborgs, sent from another planet. (For the record, we don’t entirely dismiss this theory. But we’d need to see quite a lot more proof before we completely signed up to it.)

Yet, just before Sporting could take the corner kick which had been awarded to them, the extra assistant distinctly appeared to call the referee to him, causing the game to be held up while the two of them put their heads together on the goal line and clearly had some kind of conversation.

At that point, those of us watching seemed potentially to be on the verge of an important breakthrough – witnessing some sort of decisive intervention on the goalline official’s part which might explain their purpose more generally and why UEFA goes to the trouble of flying them all the way from Norway (in last night’s case), putting them in a hotel, feeding them, issuing them with uniforms, etc.

Alas, what happened next was… well, nothing.

The conversation went on for quite a long time. The players stood and waited. At the end of the conversation, the referee trotted back to his position on the edge of the penalty area. He then waved for the delayed corner to be taken. He didn’t talk to anyone; he didn’t noticeably address anything that the goalline official might have drawn to his attention. It was if the exchange had never happened.

No wiser, then. No closer to solving the mystery. Still entirely in the dark, in fact. For all we know (and for all the difference it made), the goalline official called the referee over because he had just remembered the punchline to a joke that he had started to tell in the courtesy car on the way to the ground.

But that’s not to say that we’re giving up now. Far from it. We scientists don’t do that. We know the truth may be hard to arrive at. But we push on towards it anyway.

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

Stronger and Tougher

I was at a friend's wedding on Saturday when the match was being played so I could only check updates via various social media and on livescore.com.

The debate and the discussions at the wedding grounds after the match made me realise that almost all of the oppositions never really liked the idea of us going unbeaten. The most obvious reason being that its Chelsea. Anything good about Chelsea leaves a bad taste in the mouths of all non - Chelsea fans and going unbeaten in a season will be the worst taste.

The second being that with Arsenal almost trophy-handicapped and mostly  4th best in the league over a long period of time it was only humane to let them cling on the last modicum of superiority that they have or had depending on which part of the century you are from.

It wasn’t the best result for me, or the team, on a rather delightful day for me but come to think of it, it wasn’t all doom and gloom for the team.

We lost to a Newcastle team that has been on up for some time now at one of our most difficult grounds to play in without our best midfield enforcer in the person of Nemanja Matic. Even Jose Mourinho has not won there on 5 occasions now and almost always the story is the same. We play well but create few chances and are finished off with some fine finishing.

If any team deserved to beat us for the first time this season it was Newcastle. They are not direct title rivals and neither are they London rivals. There is not much animosity between the fans either and we played them at a very good time in the season so no harm done there.

This match, however, gave us 2 things.

First, it eased the pressure on the team. Everybody in the media were so interested in this unbeaten run that it was neck breaking and exhausting and it put so much pressure on the team. Every opposing team prepared so much to have the game of their lives to be able to break it and this made it very difficult for the team.

Well its broken now so you can all relax now and play against us like you play the rest of the teams. Big teams are supposed to be able to handle such pressure but it is always fun to play with that freedom when nothing is at stake, except for the Premier league.

Secondly, it confirmed what I have always been saying that the most important player in this team now is Nemanja Matic. Anybody who knew how important he was to the team would not be surprised that we lost our first match in his absence. His work in putting out opposition fires is so vital and no 1 does it better than him. Mikel did his best but its not easy to command the middle like him. Its good news to have him available for the next games.

We are still 3 pts clear at the top of the table. This team will come stronger and tougher from this defeat. I've always said that the league is ours to lose this season and I still stand by it. We have everything we need to see things through so unless we are hit with the worst kind of hard luck we should be fine.

With the season building up some steam it is a massive blow to Manchester City to lose their best forward and leading goalscorer in the BPL. Aguero's scoring rate is impressive and has been the difference for the team this season both at home and in Europe. His injury is not that surprising considering his history with it and his absence will almost likely hand the title to Chelsea. City has no potent replacement upfront and Chelsea fans will not be feeling sorry at all.

I've always believed that one of the luckiest managers in the world is Arsene Wenger. With the board members of his club, their playing philosophies, the fans and even the players it looks like Arsenal was tailor - made for him. With everything that has been happening on and off the pitch I guess the last thing we all expected was to see the fans fight themselves over him.

The club can endure trophy hunger with him, no Champions league with him, unimpressive transfers and even his losing streak to Mourinho with him. But 1 thing the club cant survive is to lose their supporters. No matter how important you are to a club non can survive without their supporters. Master Wenger must really get his act together or risk leaving his beloved Arsenal like Rafael Benitez left Chelsea. And that is even if he can win something in his last season.