Grand Old Team

There’s a pregnant pause in the away end. A sudden hush, like we know what’s coming. Sure enough Azpilicueta is outmuscled and the ball squirts past him at the edge of our box. Romelu Lukaku turns Gary Cahill inside out several times before almost taking the dark blue net off the goal frame and sending three sides of Goodison into screeching jubilation. 

“If you know your history!”

He does the same again a few minutes later and we know our hopes of a cup final to round off our wretched write-off of a season are over. Deep breath and step out into the suddenly dark streets of Liverpool. Raise your voice, “Champions of Europe, you’ll never sing that”, anything for ammunition. You know you’re no longer singing for fun, just trying to restore a little bit of pride for Chelsea. 

Hardly back on the coach before my boozy haze is a dull headachy hangover, feeling tired and empty. Sore throat and a wobbly head chugging back to Euston on a train so old that trainspotters punctuate the end of each station. Their flashbulbs going off as we roll through. That’s it then. The last throw of the dice ended up with snake eyes. A make or break week for Chelsea Football Club’s season that broke it once and for all. The anti-climactic performance at home to PSG was followed by a similarly toothless performance away to Everton, with just a free scarf to show for it.

Our attention turns to the remaining handful of league games, and really, to what Conte (as everyone is so sure) can achieve next season. Chelsea tend to do well with an Italian manager, after all, and there seemed to be a fresh optimism in the air. Teenagers on Twitter trade their dream line ups. Why some of these superstars will want to come to a midtable side likely without European football of any sort is anyone’s guess, though.

Whoever comes in faces an uphill struggle, make no mistake. Not just regarding the quality of our players but the atmosphere in the dressing room and in the stands. Dare I call it a palpable discord. I actually saw someone on Twitter pipe up and saw that Conte not coming in would serve the board right and that they should be left in the mess they created. It’s almost as if the old guard, the “saw Chelsea lose 6-0 away at Rotherham in 1981” old guard, don’t care so much about results. They were here long before anyone else at the club and will be here long afterwards. No, what matters is that the players care, the players fight for the badge, the players “get” what Chelsea are about. This is becoming rarer and rarer though, and has been lacking in spades this year. The desire for a home-grown player, a Harry Kane or a Ross Barkley of our own almost seems to eclipse the desire for the team to do well for some. While Loftus-Cheek has been given a hefty new deal and declared he wants to stay at the club, what does that really mean in modern football?

I think that’s why our respective worlds fell apart a few weeks ago when JT announced that he’ll most probably be gone at the end of the season. Tel, the one who started cleaning boots at Harlington and hung about until he was lifting trophies on a regular basis. Always counted on to celebrate a victory just like us in the stands: teeth gritted until veins bulge out his neck, pumping the air underarm and thumping the badge on his chest as he looks to us in the away end. He’s that link between us and our hugely successful global brand of a football club. He’s the last of my Chelsea, as he is for a lot of others.

This Chelsea line up has been accused of lacking stomach, spines and hearts until you’re not sure what body parts they’ll have left for next season. Unfortunately, you can count on the atmosphere of mercenarism increasing if the club captain goes. We’re currently in a laughable Catch-22 of a situation, with the club leaving JT’s fate for the next manager to decide, but apparently being in no apparent rush to formally appoint anyone.

The next Chelsea manager, Conte or not, will have a battle on his hands. To get the team firing and back up to where it’s expected to be, but also to appease an increasingly alienated match going fan base. I just hope he knows his history.

@JJReid13

Celery and Concrete Cows

We score and I spill along the aisle, punching the air again and again, my voice hoarse as I try to raise it above the crowd. I needed that. Coming to my senses I shrink sheepishly back to my seat, knowing that I overdid it slightly. “You know it’s only MK Dons yeah mate?”

It’s weird though. Even when they equalise, there’s no hatred. We try to wind them up, but we can’t. What’s the fun when no one fights back? The only one giving us anything, standing up with a goading grin, the only one who isn’t sat down sharing a packet of pick and mix with their kids? He actually turns out to be Chelsea in the home end. He’s escorted up the aisle, around to join us and our V-signs turn into cheers.

You can’t wind them up, because they just don’t care. We used to sing “you should have gone to the pictures” at other fans, taking the mickey out of some hard, loyal fan base like Pompey, belittling their support, making it out to be something so frivolous that it’s on par with a trip to the cinema or an afternoon at the shops with the missus. But with MK, that’s exactly the case. They turn up early and queue outside the club entrance to watch our superstars get off the coach. A Football League club in their town is the chance to experience what they’ve seen on telly for real. Clamber for autographs. Bubbling down and then spiking in a shrieking noise each time as Fabregas or Oscar or Willian spring off the coach. Boo Costa like a pantomime villain. Replica shirts for a club that didn’t exist ten years ago and you wonder who they supported before. 

But somehow the day still got me riled up. I write this because I had a whole tree of celery taken off me at the turnstiles. The steward ums and ahs, mumbling that his pre-match briefing had included something about celery. When in doubt, call over your Miss Trunchbull of a supervisor. In the end they take the whole lot. Even the leafy sprig of it tucked boozily behind my ear. 

“Why are you trying to take celery into a football ground anyway?”

“I don’t know.”

The ordeal puts me in a bad mood, maybe that’s why I cheered the goal like I did.

As we head back home, singing the celery song that was unfairly ripped away from me earlier, I almost feel sorry for them. Milton Keynes don’t have any bizarre rituals. No MK equivalent of celery. They can grasp for an identity all they want: call one end of their catalogue stadium the Cowshed or cling to the Dons moniker, but it’s not real. It’s not Chelsea. Maybe it’s because of the decade we’ve had of being asked where we were when we were sh*t, but Chelsea crave an identity. There’s a huge desire for a singing Shed, a giant Blue Flag that says Pride of London on it, CPO shares in abundance and making sure Chelsea Football Club remains at Stamford Bridge. It’s all part of it. It’s all tied up in those two words Proper Chels.

More so than missing out on Europe this year, I worry that we’ll lose what makes Chelsea ours. We might half fill Wembley next year or it might not happen at all. We might end up in an identikit stadium, faces you don’t recognise all around you, speakers pumping out music after goals in place of atmosphere and a team of mercenaries. Players who don’t clap you at the end of a game will half-heartedly play possession football in a cup game against lower-league opposition that makes you wonder why you still go. But just as the rest of the crowd is leaving on 80 minutes, and you’re about to give up hope, a flash of green will whip through your peripheral vision, and a lump of celery will whistle past your ear. 

Whatever happens, we’ll always have celery.

 

@JJReid13

Living in the moment

A grey Thames, sloshing high up on the banks, under a grey sky. The rain drops rifle into the river, coming in steady, splashing back up with the dirty river water until the whole thing looks like it’s bubbling, like it’s alive. Crack open the Stella and slurp up the excess froth that tries to escape. The train chugs through the dirty black and brown of Elephant, like the colours of the tube lines that go through it, and into South, with flashes of green, rolling away from the houses and up the hills. Up to Forest Hill, down the other side to Penge. Transmitters stretching up to the clouds. They’ll be sending images of the game all over the capital, the country, the world today. But I’ll be there in person, down the front, yards from the players, rain on my face and soaking through my shoes. A part of it.

I remember reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and how he said that’s there’s nothing quite like actually being there when you’re on a bike. In the moment, with tarmac flying below you, no windscreen, no one relaying information.

You're in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming. Actually being there, as opposed to behind a screen. 

I won’t have any instant replays or ad breaks or have a pundit telling me what to think. Just me and football. I’ve paid £40 to stand in the rain and watch my football team play another. The price leaves a sour taste, but there’s something beautiful in the simplicity of it.  

The train grinds into Thornton Heath and I finish my can hastily, the bubbles shooting up my nose as if going straight up into my brain. But it’s not just the lager, it’s the excitement, anticipation sending static shooting all over my body. I watch the light on the ticket machine flick from amber to green, barriers thumping open. Run past this set of lights while they’re red so you can get to that set of lights while they’re still green. Suck my legs up to get over that kerb and not under the van as it whistles past. Faster than I’ve moved all week after Christmas. To the ‘Spoons opposite the station. Only just through the doors and it’s rammed, packed, Old Bill not letting anyone else in. Ten deep at the bar, buy two pints per person to save yourself the trip next time. Just a sea of greys and blues and blacks. Just pin badges, familiar faces and our songs identify the pub as Chelsea. Mustard.

____

I’m wearing the big Fjällräven jacket. The one that’s a bit too Bear Grylls for football, and I know will get the piss taken out of me. I don’t mind though, because it’s bucketing down on the walk from the pub to the ground. Seeing Jay bent double in a paper thin Harrington, saturated before we get to the end of the road. The alcohol dulls the cold and heightens the exhilaration of walking through unfamiliar streets, singing songs, locals all staring at us. Laughing about how we all did the same thing the year before and will probably do the same again next year. Queue to get in and list the things to moan about. You decided to wear suede shoes. They’ve run out of programmes. Take the piss out of Croydon while you’re on their patch. All Chelsea together. Have a beer on the concourse, chat about your Christmas and your New Year. Just enough small talk to be polite. Talking nonsense, things you won’t remember the following day after a beer anyway. The song builds and you can’t hold it anymore, with a smile growing on your face, because this is what it’s all about. Throwing your head back and joining the roar. Who’s that team you call the Chelsea?

____

When Willian crashes in one of the goals of the season, it’s as if all the blood is sucked out of my head. Everything disappears. Frustrations, worries, sanity. I’ve lost Jay and the others too; God only knows where they’ve disappeared to. I’m sprinting down the aisle, fighting past bodies as they fall, jumping on top of strangers as we reach the front. Limbs all over the shop. Bruised shins and hoisting myself up, balancing on the backs of the plastic seats. I can swear I see Oscar look at me, and the Brazilian multimillionaire and I share a moment, his expression the exact same as mine. For all his money and sponsorship deals and talent, for a moment we’re on the same wavelength. Screaming back at each other; a roaring, beaming smile because Chelsea have just made the game safe. 

I search the internet for footage of me, looking to see my beige jacket bouncing up and down on Match of the Day. There’s nothing though. Just the memories of those who were there, who’ll sing the John Obi Mikel song for weeks to come. Good. I hate people who live their lives behind a screen, recording moments like that to relive over and over. It’s something the television cameras and the Youtube fan channels and Twitter will never properly encapsulate anyway. What it’s like to be Chelsea when the opposition’s net ripples and those sparks fly in your brain and you get let everything go. When all hell breaks loose. Enjoy it to the full, and then it’s over. We go on, searching for the next one. We’ll need a few more this season.

@JJReid13

Not In Service

The Hateful Eight drags on and by the time it’s finished I’ve missed the last train.

The laughter, the drinks and the evening melt away and it’s just me again. On my own. I’m stood at New Cross and watching as bus after bus goes by with Not In Service piercing the dark, the numbers on their fronts not mattering at this time of night. A whole fleet of them parked up in the depot round the corner, not a single one willing to take me home. The cold bites and makes my work trousers feel paper thin, wind whipping by.

I get on the wrong bus. Due to the last of the alcohol or something else, I’m not sure. So desperate to get out of the cold, away from the bus stop and toward something different.

Everything’s slightly unalike, like a parallel dimension. The bus has got grey poles instead of yellow, or yellow instead of grey. Just as it’s about to continue on the right road, it lurches round a corner at an obtuse angle like buses do, dragging itself through streets and up the hill faster than you can get up or say something or ring the bell or anything at all.

I’m off and I’m shouting swearwords and immediately feeling the guilt pang in case I’ve woken anyone up. Hood flung up and walking through the streets so fast I might trip over my own feet. But it’s no good. All alone with a drink inside you and your thoughts turn to her. Eyes screwed shut, hands plunged deep into pockets to lock out the cold. Get out of my head. Walking through the streets that she showed you in the first place.

It’s 1AM in Nunhead. Try to take a deep breath but can’t. Swelling in your throat and you can’t breathe in deeper than a couple of inches. Because it’s all on top of you, the weight of it all, and it’s dragging you down.

She came to represent these streets. Beautiful and mysterious and dangerous and fantastic. An adventure. Able to take the piss out of you and make you feel stupid and still leave you with a smile on your face. To let you in on a secret and show you things you never thought possible. Offering an opportunity to let yourself become something new. A secret, clandestine ideal just a bus ride from the cold, steely centre. South London.

Stand there with eyes swivelling, looking around in a wild desperation as traffic lights change for no one and foxes crash through the bins. And as shit as it sounds you just want her to be happy and you’ve no way of helping that because she wants nothing to do with you. You let yourself down and you hate yourself because of it. You want to cut that cowardly bit out of yourself and throw it away, kick the fuck out of it, until it’s spewing blood and spitting out lumps of teeth like in the Tarantino film you’ve just seen. Compromise: punch a lamppost like a div and cut your knuckles.

Jog on. By the end you’re rushing, pushing to the front door and scrambling with your key in the lock, wanting to get into bed and close your eyes put an end to the day. Set your alarm for a few hours’ time and hope tomorrow will be better, hope that your brain will decide to interpret what you put in front of it in a more positive light.

“Alright mate? You look a bit long in the boat”

“Just tired mate. ‘Night”

@JJReid13