Dave’s Ramblings – Bournemouth
On the Chelsea website this morning, they were genuinely asking fans to “put your skills to the test and predict the starting lineup.” Really? At this point, we’ve got more chance inventing a recipe for homemade gold. Maresca’s lineups change so much even he probably uses the random shuffle button.
The theory, apparently, is that it’s impossible for the opposition manager to plan against us if he has absolutely no idea who we’re going to play or what system we’re attempting to use. Which would be brilliant…. if our own players also weren’t completely baffled.
As it is, half of them turn up on matchday looking around the dressing room like they’ve walked into the wrong wedding reception. No one knows the formation, no one knows their role, and nobody has the faintest clue who the stranger next to them is.
Our tactical plan (certainly at Leeds) basically boiled down to: ‘Confuse the enemy by first confusing ourselves to the point of existential crisis.’
It’s revolutionary. Terrible, but revolutionary.
Today? Well there were some issues before the game when Maresca handed his team sheet into the Referee, Mr. A. Barstard. Apparently he called it his “seaside 11”.
The team named was:
1. Sandy Beach
2. Ricky Reef
3. Peter Pebble
4. Piers Walker
5. Kevin Coral
6. Danny Driftwood
7. Timmy Tide
8. Sunny De Mar
9. George C. Gull
10. Lenny Lighthouse
11. Rocky Cliff
After another stack of changes we started as we had left off the other evening. A massive degree of uncertainty at the back and, after just 3 minutes we are one down. Luckily it was offside, though the time the VAR team spent deciding it suggested it was a very close call.
The rest of the first half… well it was windy, Delap got injured, and Bournemouth somehow didn’t score at least one. I can only assume that’s because the universe has a sense of humour. We were, once again, about as coordinated as a group chat deciding where to go for dinner. I genuinely don’t remember us having a single shot on target. Nearly 50 minutes of football and nothing. That’s impressive. Well impressively poor! The only saving grace, well it couldn’t get any worse could it.
Four minutes into the second half and, brace yourselves, we did it. We actually had a shot that Petrovic had to save. A real one. With his hands. Oh my word. Was this… hope? Could this be the start of something bigger?
Well, yes! Because apparently someone flipped the switch from sleep mode to demo mode. Within minutes we hit the post and then rattled off two or three more shots on target like we’d just remembered football is about kicking the ball toward the net.
Could this be the shape of things to come?! Or was it just a brief, glorious, completely accidental burst of competence? Well… sorry to be the bearer of sad news, but that little spark we witnessed was pretty much the peak. The summit. The absolute ceiling. From there on out, it was mostly downhill like a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel.
Palmer made it to about the hour mark before coming off which, after such a long absence, is basically the footballing equivalent of running a marathon after spending an age on the sofa. He clearly needs some minutes in his legs, hopefully with a few more to come on Tuesday.
We somehow made it through the entire game without winning a single corner. Not one. Zilch. Bugger all. A full ninety plus minutes of football and we couldn’t even accidentally kick the ball off a Bournemouth defender. This, remember, was against a severely depleted side who’d picked up just one point from their last five games.
My takeaways from the game…
He gets plenty of stick, and let’s be honest it’s frequently deserved, but on this occasion Robert Sánchez was (in my view) our man of the match. Yes, really. His distribution was excellent (a plot twist no one saw coming), and he pulled off more than a few saves that kept us in the game and earned us a point. A point that we probably just about deserved. For one glorious afternoon, he transformed from liability in many fans eyes to unexpected hero. Long may it continue!
If there’s one thing our team does consistently, it’s being unable to break down sides who sit back and play on the counter. Honestly, it’s like watching someone trying to open a childproof medicine bottle. Lots of effort, zero progress, and growing frustration for everyone involved.
This was especially obvious in the second half, when Bournemouth dropped so deep they were practically holding team meetings in their own six-yard box. Not really much of a shock that we had absolutely no idea what to do about it.
It’s definitely something Maresca needs to sort out, and soon. Leeds had us completely sussed on Wednesday, and Bournemouth weren’t far off pulling off the same trick here. At this rate, every team in the league will realise the secret to stopping us is just stand still in a big group and wait for us to get confused!
I’m really hoping we’re not reenacting last year’s great Christmas meltdown, just ahead of schedule. The problem is our upcoming fixtures look about as friendly as a meerkat with a hangover. Not exactly the kind you circle on the calendar and think there are lots of points coming!
After the highs of Barca and Arsenal, this week feels like we’ve swan-dived off a very tall mountain and landed in a wheelie bin. With the lid closed. And someone sat on top.
But hey, every time despair taps us on the shoulder, we can simply remind ourselves that we are still champions of the entire planet! UTC 💙
Dave M
