It’s been a quiet seven days since Chelsea’s last game, both here and in the news. A discussion about the whereabouts of Roman Abramovich and the consequences of his absence took place in the comments section of Tony’s Middlesbrough review post. Thankfully it appears Abramovich is not looking to sell Chelsea any time soon.
The club announced yesterday that it has struck a deal to show archive footage and club news on YouTube, the first such deal to be done by a Premiership football club. It’s great to see Chelsea leading the way. A lot of organisations would do well to follow Chelsea’s example and embrace technology rather than pay lawyers to fight it.
I’ve been spending my free time these last few weeks developing another website for Chelsea fans which I hope to launch soon. It’s difficult to gauge its potential, but if it proves as popular as this site then my time won’t have been wasted. I’ll post more about it in coming weeks.
This weekend sees a return to FA Cup action. The fifth round draw was as kind as previous rounds and paired Chelsea with Norwich City, the lowest ranked club still in the competition.
Ricardo Carvalho is set to return after recovering from a fever which kept him out of last weekend’s win over Middlesbrough. He should start alongside John Terry who came through that win unscathed after his long lay-off.
Jon Obi Mikel returns to the squad but Ashley Cole, Joe Cole and Michael Ballack are still unavailable.
Canaries manager Peter Grant is expected to name the same team that started the midweek replay against Blackpool.
The Blues have fallen at the fifth round hurdle in two of the last three years, but have a great recent record against Norwich. In 2002, Chelsea faced the Canaries at Stamford Bridge in a third round replay after a 0-0 draw at Carrow Road. Chelsea won the game 4-0 and Gianfranco Zola scored one of the goals of his career, a sublime near post back-heeled shot on the run from a Graeme Le Saux corner.
Let’s hope we see some Zola-esque magic in this game.
