The November Curse Strikes Again….. or does it?
[1]Just like the rest of us on Saturday I was really pi**ed off, on a back of a good run comes a real lifeless lazy performance of a team that maybe of the late 70’s and early 80’s would have been proud. The only Chelsea that turned up were the fans, whilst the rest of the club was in some sort of coma or just still in a sleep mode.
We know November is not kind to us, its broken a few of our league seasons which have been impossible to recover from. These sort of matches are ones best erased from the memory quickly, but also have that nasty doubt feeling that tends to linger.
So really what was behind such a poor performance? Looking at the team with hindsight is one thing, we can always say after the event that a certain player did not do well, but was it the wrong team for the wrong event. I’m all for the bold approach nothing better to see Chelsea players swarming over the opposition, but let be honest about it we are not the same team away from home. At The Bridge there is a fear factor for visitors, away we just don’t make it count, it not the time you have with the ball its what you do with it, plus some players do make you feel just a bit on edge when they are prone to making mistakes or go missing this I’m sure unsettles the team as well, added to that I’m not a fan of the one man up front either, two strikers are better than one, and flooding the midfield just kills games.
Newcastle is not a favorite place either, the longest away trip in the calender and an early kick off is a passion killer for a start, its a trip I’ve done many a time in the past and never looked forward to it. Congested roads, crazy petrol prices, crap motorway services which are all over priced, then there’s finding a safe place to park that some half clothed local does not shove something resembling food up your car exhaust, as well as dodging the local women who would scare the wits out of the most die hard of vikings, and that’s before you got into a ground which still resembles a half finish asylum, and then are those stairs to contend with.
In scratching around for a reason for such a bad performance, I looked into the history bit of November the 2nd and for some time it looked to be a cursed day, 5 times we had been drawn away on this date prior to 1985 losing 4 and drawing the other, even our 4 home games up until 1985 have been split with 2 wins and 2 defeats so 2 wins and 7 defeats was beginning to show up some trend, but since 1985 we won all 4 games we played on the 2nd of November and all of those were away.
Thus the only conclusion is was just one of those bad days at the office that we all get from time to time, in other words sh*t happens, can it be a good thing a kick in the plum’s a reminder that there is still much work to be done or has shown us up as false challengers….. only time will tell.
Voltaire