Tottenham Hotspur 1-5 Chelsea - Tainted Love

I will start by saying that my views are invariably coloured by having grown up in Tottenham and being related to a number of Spurs fans as well as counting some among my closest friends. These days I rarely take the deep joy that is afforded most Chelsea fans when we discomfit them. Like an Aintree vet, destroying Spurs is something I see as necessary but unpalatable, so this report may be too restrained for some tastes. (And it’s interesting to note how the term “destroy”, which was once the standard way of referring to putting down injured race horses seems to be disappearing from the racing lexicon. Not good for the marketing I presume.)

Then again maybe what it really boils down to is the fact that when we were beating Spurs regularly they had the excuse of being no good. Now when they are doing well, we don’t seem to be able to get by them without some sort of controversy, which heavily impinges on the amount of smug, self-righteousness that one can exude in victory. To win when we are favourites lacks lustre, to lose when favourites adds extra layers of humiliation, so what I really wanted is a straight forward win while we are on some sort of parity and particularly at Wembley where we have never beaten them.

However my view of this game is very much affected by what I heard on the radio in the lead up to kick-off. I don’t usually feel so strongly but last night was different. I wasn’t in the ground because I don’t happen to agree with the semis being at Wembley, and so the raw excitement and emotion that is generated by being at the event is not there to ameliorate my feelings of disgust at some of what went on yesterday evening.

I will now raise the screens, load the shotgun, glance briefly at the quivering carcass of a once fine beast that was the anticipated semi-final clash and proceed.

The “fans”

You can’t choose your family and you can’t choose your fellow supporters either. Over the years there have been plenty of times when the individual actions of fellow fans have left me wondering exactly what is it that I’ve attached myself to. But every club has its “singular” troop, I suppose, and I am not responsible for the behaviour of others and don’t feel I condone it just because I go to watch football.

But as I’m writing the report for yesterday’s semi-final, I do find myself questioning just how I share any common ground with the kind of gobshites who felt it was a proper form of self-expression to jeer such that the referee had to blow an end to the minute’s silence after what felt like thirty seconds.

I am particularly exercised about this because what I heard on the radio was not the odd distant shout or heckle that you sometimes get with these silences, but a determined and concerted booing by a sizeable group of people. If your perception is different then you may find what I have to say a tad overstated. But I think there was some quite disgraceful behaviour by Chelsea fans and it needs calling out and not excusing.

I really don’t care how much drink you have taken or what your personal “issues” may be. If your moral compass has become so disorientated that you think a reasonable or appropriate response to the ham-fisted way that the FA and ITV have handled the setting of what should be a show-piece game, is to abuse the request to pause and remember some ordinary individuals who died for no other reason than they chose to watch a football match at a time when the police and the authorities took a view that somehow followers of the national game deserved to be treated with a level of contempt and reckless neglect that made crowd death at some point inevitable, then you have lost sight of the horizon on which sits any semblance of civilised behaviour. And here I’m assuming you engaged in such risible actions out of a sense of grievance rather than unadulterated vacuity.

Worse still, you are encouraging the ordinary, decent Chelsea fan, to be treated as some form of moral pariah.

You think I’m overreacting? The club had a statement out within minutes of the game finishing. They obviously appreciate the damage that’s been done.

We wanted special consideration from the FA with regard to fixture congestion. Oh boy, you’ve really helped that particular cause.

And please don’t give me that we’re Chelsea, so fuck all the rest, we’re happy when we’re hated, juvenile, testosterone fuelled cobblers either. Take a step out of your blinkered, narrow, hate addled mind and take a view of what constitutes your responsibilities within a civilized society.

I don’t expect a football crowd to be like a WI day out. This is not a prudish recoiling from bad language or boisterous behaviour. If you had something to say, if you didn’t agree with there being a minute’s silence then choose a forum where you can stand up and be counted. Have a demonstration outside the ground or outside the FA, so that you as an individual can be seen make a statement.

But this was about hiding in a crowd.

There is a proper debate to be had over the growth and focus of memorializing in our society (cf the commercialization of the Titanic versus completely forgotten Spirit of Free Enterprise). Yes these days there are times when watching football, I have no idea what the black armband or the minute’s applause/silence is about. There is nothing worrying about having concerns that football matches are being used to make political statements disguised as displays of national grief. But given the nature of this singular occasion such a straight out display of such mindless, boorishness contributes nothing.

Proper rebellion requires confronting the source of the problem and not thoughtlessly insulting the dead and their relatives. Most right-thinking people will see this as the usual “Chelsea” minority that somehow keeps hanging around the club like a bad smell and hopefully not characterize everyone according to the behaviour of this unsavoury element. I’m sure a Venn diagram of casual racism, anti-Semitism, abusive behaviour towards unaccompanied women, bar staff (particularly female), anyone engaged in public services around football, and the general threatening of violence would all overlap in the person of those individuals who made themselves heard.

Perhaps I’m guilty of being over-sensitive. However while I, like the next man, can be bemused by what goes on with Liverpool FC and their indulgence by the great and the good, and can see an argument for this whole Sunday evening nonsense having been avoided with better foresight and planning, I don’t think you can in any way excuse or diminish the display of insulting and uncaring selfishness that we heard yesterday evening.

And I make no apology for declaiming at length. Plenty of you may be able to comfortably deal with these events, you may feel that it was expected and, quite rightly, that there was nothing that you could have done to stop it. You don’t know these people personally and have no conduit through which to make your feelings known. However I was appalled by the scale of what occurred. A minority it may be but it was significant enough to be a concern, in my view. And as I write for this blog, I wouldn’t feel right unless I said something.

I’m not advocating the return to some half-remembered golden age, I’m not demanding we should all have to dress in a sports jacket and tie for the gents and a below the knee skirt for the ladies in order to be admitted to the ground, I’m just wondering why it is so hard for certain people to exhibit the most basic humanity towards other members of society. Are these people really that brutalized?

Make no mistake. Next time you are herded around, have cameras thrust in your face, are scared shitless by frenzied police dogs, it’s the behaviour of these boyos more than anything else that gives the police and the “system” the confidence to treat you, a law abiding citizen, like a potentially violent criminal and deny you your right to go peacefully and unmolested about your business, which is the rather quaint theory upon which our society supposedly operates.

Mass football supporting grew out of the working classes. But ordinary working people have a common decency and basic shared values that preclude the kind of behaviour that went on last night. Working people are being priced out of the game and there are those only too keen to portray loutish and uncivilized acts as the province of the less well off parts of society. They can’t wait to rid the game of what they see as the “troublesome” element that stand in the way of their product being more “family friendly” and are happy to conflate behaviour with income group and try to change the “target audience” through ever increasing prices.

So thanks for that lads. You’ve been a great help to the rest of us.

The game

As for the game, a 5-1 beating of Spurs should be an occasion for great joy. But while my feelings were coloured by the pre-game events I’m sure for many this was an opportunity to bask in a very warm glow.

Yet somehow we are dogged once again, not only by the morally attenuated, but by major refereeing controversy.

Now I’m guessing, having not sampled the available media widely, that these are fairly sure to be the main talking points:

Chelsea goal number two – Did the ball cross the line? I was watching ITV and their angles were poor but it looked like it never crossed the line. Yet while they were eager to wade in about goal-line technology, how come they, with all their resources, haven’t managed to rig up cameras that look along and above the goal-line from both sides?

There is a photo doing the Twitter rounds purporting to show that the ball did cross the line, looking from an angle I didn’t see on the box, but until we get some sort of proper provenance on the source, I wouldn’t hang my hat on it.

Tottenham goal (in the singular) – Should Cech have been red carded? Well no. The referee played a split second advantage and while Adebayor himself was denied a goal scoring opportunity Bale was on hand to score. Therefore Spurs were not denied a goal scoring opportunity and in the spirit and letter of the law, Cech stays on. Talk along the lines of Bale letting the ball run out so that Cech goes and they get a penalty is surely arrant nonsense since that would be Spurs electing not to take a goal scoring opportunity, not a goal scoring opportunity denied. So all they could get would be a penalty surely?

Now we’re getting to the barrel scraping:

Cahill - Was it a handball? Do me a favour. It hit the point of his shoulder.

Mikel – Should be a red card for a kick out at Parker? This is probably lost in the general seething but on another day it might have been the case. There was no need for retaliation. I wouldn’t be surprised if the FA try and get at him. Then again it was nothing really.

What did JT say to Adebayor?

One small matter that I bet will get no coverage happened at about 90 minutes and thirty seconds (check your recording if you made one).

Adebayor has just been booked for a foul on Cahill and is walking away. JT walks up behind him and says something. Judging by Adebayor’s reaction it’s nothing controversial. He then says “Adee…” and proceeds quite obviously to advise him that he has extraneous snot on his nose. Adebayor then wipes his nostrils with his shirt and wanders on.

Is this an attempt at image rehabilitation? Right in the middle of a blood and thunder cup semi-final, is Terry sufficiently aware of his need to appear caring to other ethnicities, what with an upcoming court case and the related furore? Or is he just a man sufficiently decent to be moved by the knowledge that as a vanquished opponent takes a booking and will therefore be in the eye of the lens, his dignity should not further suffer through the presence of unsightly snot around the gills. Oh JT, he is ever the enigma.

Football time is linear

So it all turns on that goal then really. We are denied the true spoils of victory, because already the “meeja” are preaching that whatever the record books say we didn’t earn a true win.

Well, having been on the receiving end of plenty (hello Tom I’m looking at you), I’m not feeling guilty. It’s not as though the team set out to cheat, despite one Simon Burnton of the Guardian choosing to put it thus:

“Nobody got a better view of that incident than Mata himself, and he wheeled away to celebrate immediately. Worth having a go, as it transpired, but that’s cheating just as much as any amount of Ashley Young dives.” (Polite request - please don’t use Chelsea players as a crutch to prop up your frankly laughable efforts to excuse United’s blatant cheating.)

No doubt we’ll hear of more apologies to the losing manager from Mike Riley, but there’s a chasm between what Mata did and the antics of Young. But this is the tenor of how the game will be viewed, I’m sure.

Indeed his colleague Dominic Fifield is so overcome he uses the term “mess of a performance” in consecutive paragraphs to describe Chelsea’s first half, only interpolating the word “personal” on one occasion so as to avoid pure repetition.

Now, what has to be borne in mind is that whatever happened after that goal was awarded can only be judged within the limits of the subsequent events that are related in a linear fashion. You cannot posit that the game would have been 1-1 had Chelsea not been credited with the second, since the pattern of the game changes at 2-0. Not just in the way Tottenham played but also Chelsea. Thus without the second goal, it doesn’t strictly follow that Tottenham equalize, since Chelsea would not be raiding forward in numbers as they did with the benefit of a two goal cushion.

It was regrettable, and I have some sympathy for Spurs fans who must wonder what it is with this ball over the goal-line business with us of late. However it was not the knock-out blow it is painted.

And for the “these things even themselves out” school of thought there is the Champions League “ghost” goal and perhaps more significantly Malouda’s disallowed goal against Everton to add to their body of evidence in support of this theory. Though how two goal incidents against Liverpool clubs then impact on with two Spurs, (let’s not forget the Gomez ball on the line fiasco) I have no idea.

What does irk me is the effort to ascribe the Spurs goal to some sort of lucky break for us. They scored for fuck’s sake. If they’d got a second one, well who knows? Do you really want a penalty and a team down to 10 men instead of the goal? Where’s all the “well the referee destroyed the spectacle” baloney now? If the ref blows as Bale is about to convert, Cech walks and they then miss the penalty, what then? What further sanction would be demanded? The referee got it right. End of.

And as if this all wasn’t enough, it looks like David Luiz might be done for at least a couple of games. And that is a major, major blow, just as the fixtures pile up and we face the sort of teams where he might prove a real asset.

So awash in a sea of troubles, we are left clinging to the passing, broken spar of “hollow” victory and the nagging thought that with the “goal”, a first half clearance off the line and Van Der Vaart hitting the post, we may have used up a lot of luck in one game.

So let’s end positively.

Chelsea scored four very good goals.

RDM selected the right team and they responded.

The team performed well on the whole. By no means outstanding, with some of the defending in the first half a little shaky, I thought. There was still a worrying tendency to not track the runner assiduously, to be caught on the wrong side of the player receiving the ball. Indeed the Spurs goal could be laid at Sideshow’s door as he was caught by Adebayor’s quick turn. However given the hamstring problem I can’t be sure how it would have worked out had he remained alongside the Spurs striker.

Chelsea started as the more composed team but were certainly starting to come under pressure as the first half came to a close. They probably hadn’t earned the lead they took in at half time, but it was a beautiful strike by Drogba.

They certainly passed the ball and kept possession very well during phases of the second half and cleverly exploited the space in midfield once Defoe replaced van De Vaart. Jim Beglin had anticipated the problems reverting to 4-4-2 might give Spurs and he was proved right. He remains one of the few, perhaps the only voice worth listening to on ITV.

Man of the Match was Drogba, although Mikel was again solid and more forward looking with his passing. Mata grew into the game when the space opened up and Kalou posed a threat with several really well chosen passes around the box. But DD got at them, got the game breaking goal and unsettled their defence so as to allow his team-mates some time and room to work in.

I think we should spare a thought for Carlo Cudicini. I would rather we had put five past Friedel than a popular ex-Chelsea player. And while I know many have little time for Gallas, again I personally would rather it had not been him.

All in all, for me it was a rather strange evening all round, so many conflicting and contradictory emotions. I long for the simpler life but then maybe there’s no pleasing me…

The press reports

The Guardian, Dominic Fifield: “This ended up feeling like a thrashing, the massed ranks of Chelsea support crowing in giddy celebration as bitter rivals were teased open and torn apart. Yet, while Roberto Di Matteo’s side can now thrill at the prospect of a fourth FA Cup final in six years against Liverpool next month, Tottenham Hotspur’s departure from this competition came with a snarl.”

The Daily Telegraph, Henry Winter: “This was more than a game. So much more. This was madness, injustice and beauty all rolled into one compelling evening’s entertainment, a demolition derby dressed up in FA Cup semi-final refinery that will reverberate loud and long.”

The Independent, Sam Wallace: “It was a frantic, fiery, no-holds-barred kind of FA Cup semi-final between two clubs that cannot stand the idea of one another and two teams whose form has soared and dipped this season. Such a pity it will be remembered for a stupid refereeing mistake that should could so easily have been avoided.”

The Official Chelsea FC Website: “Even the most optimistic of Chelsea fans would have been hard pushed to envisage this outcome but we win in style to send us to our fourth FA Cup Final out of six since the new Wembley opened.”

The goals

43’ Drogba 0-1 49’ Mata 0-2 56’ Bale 1-2 77’ Ramires 1-3 81’ Lampard 1-4 90+4’ Malouda 1-5