Keep Reading, There Are Some Positives Eventually

I’ve never been to a game where a fixture 2 weeks hence, has dominated talk over the task in hand. ‘Defoe and Bale in for Crouch and Peanut. Only changes from Milan’ I half-heartedly announced to the chaps on the steps of ‘The Olive’. ‘Oh right’. They couldn’t have possibly cared less. It wasn’t their fault, I’d tried to turn the conversation away from our flight plans to Madrid and keeping our collective fingers crossed that we all had enough loyalty points for a ticket to the game. West Ham was the reality. We were keeping it Real.

Familiar reality bit hard once we were in the ground however; a typically positive start, a few chances created, and several narrow misses was followed by 80% possession and 11 men behind the ball from another, putting it politely, limited pack of strays. Haven’t I seen this one before? Doesn’t it just flicker out to an annoying draw? Well, yes. By the hour mark, I’d gone through positive, tense, frustrated and was now fully annoyed. This game and the final half hour in particular was just very, very annoying. With every poor touch, sloppy pass and Defoe miss, think bubbles began to appear over the head of the ever-brilliant Modders; ‘how long was that contract again?’. It’s this kind of performance, at home, that makes me question whether we’re consistently cut out for these top-level European adventures where we’ve had so much fun and soaked up the razzmatazz for everything it’s worth. Like I said in the build-up, it’s for the fans to get excited about Madrid, the players need to sort themselves out to make sure we’re there again next year. Oh, and Liverpool are within 4 points of us now, which is nice.

Sodding International break where we can only hope Bale doesn’t get broken by a danger from within, and somehow recaptures his pre-Christmas swagger. Another gutsy but effectively brainless shift from our Welsh flyer, not helped by the no-so-clever order to switch with Lennon. Has this ever worked? It has all the hall marks of attempting to lasoo a passing sparrow for salvation while we sink further into the brown stuff, and better ideas are needed lest we end up with the tactical rigidity of a Pokemon. ‘One of those games’, Harry uttered for the umpteenth time this season. Title contenders can have one or two of these chief. We’ve just had 3 in a row.

Genuinely don’t have the energy to sit and write about how frustrating it is to watch Defoe bumble around up front at the moment. The far from perfect Pavlova looked more threatening in the short time he was on the pitch than Defoe and the seemingly perma-crocked Rafa combined, who put in a performance that made you think that 8 million was a bit steep. If Modric gets injured, a season so nicely poised could end up simply being poisoned.

Moaning over and attempting to draw some positives from the weekends play, at least chelski done us a favour by beating citeh. As nice as it was to fantasize about that awful, awful football team falling out of the Champions League places, it was only a matter of time before they got their shizz together, and left the battle for 4^th once more for ourselves and citeh to fight out. In that respect, we’ve gained a point. It also means that if we win our game in hand and beat citeh at their gaff, then 4^th is ours. The power, to quote that show with the life-saving water bucket dangled in front of the asphyxiating trout, is in our hands.