Chelsea on Sunday afternoon. Bring it on.
strong>Regular readers will know that throughout the lifetime of H&V in its many guises, we’ve always been firm adherents to the Acker Doctrine – “There’s 92 league clubs, Tone. An’ I ‘ate 91 of ’em.”
In saying that though, there are some clubs it’s always been easier to hate than others. Step forward our next opponents. Chelsea were horrible when they were skint and shite. Then they struck lucky with their owner and became rich and successful. They were still horrible, just in a different way. Violence has given way to entitlement and arrogance to, well, that hasn’t given way to anything except more arrogance. That rich owner isn’t anything to do with them anymore but nothing else has changed. We used to have a good record against them and that’s given way to the same sort of record we have against any decent team.
At the moment Chelsea are in the top four again, which is probably getting a bit boring by now, and they’re seeing their future in Europe, where their supporters have always been such charming ambassadors for Britain. They’ve got that bloke they gave us £20 million for and even though he probably won’t ever start a game for them he’ll still be better value than we got from Danny Drinkwater and Ross Barkley. Then again, Mark Bosnich at Chelsea was better value than that pair. Their manager must think he’s won the lottery and when he gets sacked some time next year he’ll know he has.
We’ve got Matty Cash and Leon Bailey back ready to start plus Cameron Archer back ready to come on with thirty seconds left and touch the ball twice. We’ll also have our own rich owners at the match, and doesn’t it say something about the Premier League now that owners going to a match is a story?
They’re in form and so, after a fashion, are we. Which should be enough for the usual confident prediction of three easy points.
