Dave’s Ramblings – Brentford

A (hopefully) funny match report, absolutely overflowing with positivity, following Chelsea’s resounding demolition of the Bees.

 

In the absence of European football, we’d decided to create our own continental away days. And where better to begin than the sun-kissed boulevards of Brentford-sur-Thames? 🇫🇷🇮🇹🇪🇸 Forget Paris. Forget Rome. Forget Barcelona. We had the GTech Colosseum.

 

I was ready to write about goals. Glory. Magnificent football. Chelsea swaggering around West London like conquering heroes while the locals quietly returned to making honey.

 

There was just one tiny flaw in the plan. Chelsea actually had to play Brentford. And after witnessing whatever the bloody hell that was, my carefully prepared comedy travelogue has become less A Place in the Sun and more Crimewatch.

 

After a fairly encouraging start to the season, with back-to-back wins and goals flying in from all directions, we have rather quickly remembered that peace and tranquillity are not really our thing.

 

It’s now three league games without a win, with seven goals conceded during that little festival of defensive incompetence. There have been 12 already in the league this season, plus another three shipped in the Carabao Cup. At this rate, opposition strikers will soon be receiving a complimentary goal simply for turning up.

 

Clearly concerned by the fact that our defence had begun operating an open-door policy normally associated with Premier Inn, Alonso decided something had to be done.

 

So in came Henderson and Barco to shore up the midfield. Remarkably, for an hour it worked.

 

We looked organised, disciplined and difficult to break down.

 

For sixty glorious minutes, we appeared to have discovered the revolutionary tactical concept of not letting the opposition score. I genuinely began to relax.

 

Which, after nearly fifty years supporting Chelsea, was an absolutely f@cking ridiculous thing to do.

 

Everything was absolutely fine, if a little dull, until just after the hour mark. Then Brentford won a corner.

 

Now, for most football teams, defending a corner involves the rather complicated process of marking the opposition. Chelsea, always keen to innovate, like to be a little different.

 

The deep corner was nodded back across goal, where one of their players found himself completely unmarked about a yard out. He could probably have stopped, made himself a cup of tea, checked his WhatsApp messages and then headed it in.

 

1–0.

 

We apparently have a set-piece coach. I don’t know who he is, what he does, or whether he actually exists, but if he does, I’d suggest keeping very quiet about it at the moment.

 

To our credit, we did push hard for an equaliser, which naturally meant leaving enough space behind us to build a reasonably sized branch of IKEA.

 

Late on, Schade was sent completely clear. Thankfully his effort was so tame that Martinez saved it. Crisis averted. Except this is Chelsea. The ball rebounded invitingly to Thiago, who rolled it into the empty net. 2–0.

 

That really should have been that. But Brentford clearly looked at our suffering and thought, ‘You know what? I don’t think they’re quite dead yet.’ So there was still time for one of their substitutes to add a third.

 

3–0. Not beaten. Not comfortably beaten. But stuffed by Brentford in Brentford-sur-Thames at the GTech Colosseum.

 

Thankfully, the referee decided that three goals and 90 minutes of psychological damage was probably enough and blew the final whistle.

 

Those of us who were still there slowly trudged off into the darkness.

 

No singing. No swagger. No eye contact. Just hundreds of Chelsea supporters silently contemplating the life choices that had somehow led us to Brentford on a Friday night to watch that absolute f@cking shambles.

 

Somewhere behind us, the lights of the GTech Colosseum continued to glow. We didn’t look back.

 

Nobody looks back at the scene of a crime.

 

My takeaways…

 

Where do I even start with that?

 

It would be ridiculous to describe it as our worst performance of the season, mainly because that suggests there is some sort of debate to be had. There isn’t. It was beyond dreadful.

 

I’m actually struggling to remember any performances from last season that were quite as spectacularly devoid of football, although I have absolutely no doubt that several of you will immediately produce a lovingly curated list. Please don’t. I’ve suffered enough.

 

The depressing thing is that I genuinely thought we’d moved on from those days. Not necessarily very far, admittedly. I wasn’t expecting miracles but perhaps a few tentative steps forward. A little progress. Some evidence that the trauma had served an educational purpose.

 

Instead, we appear to have spent millions of pounds, changed the manager, shuffled the squad and travelled all the way to the exotic surroundings of Brentford-sur-Thames… only to discover that the abyss has been patiently waiting for us. And apparently it has season tickets.

 

Save for one or two individuals, individually we were poor. We actually started reasonably well, but it soon became obvious that we couldn’t break Brentford down.

 

Now, I’m no tactical mastermind. Nobody is going to be naming a training ground after me anytime soon. But when Plan A clearly isn’t working, I believe the traditional approach is to try Plan B.

 

Perhaps introduce someone who can run at defenders. Someone unpredictable. Someone capable of producing a little bit of magic. Someone like, and I’m just throwing a completely random name out there… Estêvão.

 

Instead, we waited until three minutes from time to bring him on. Three minutes. I’ve spent longer deciding which biscuit to have with my tea.

 

Quite what he was expected to achieve in that time I have no idea. Beat six players? Score twice? Part the Thames? Solve the Middle East crisis?

 

By the time Estêvão had worked out which direction we were attacking, the referee was probably already checking his watch. If he was Plan B, we might have considered deploying Plan B sometime before Plan A had been declared clinically dead.

 

We now disappear into what feels like a ridiculously long international break, and it’s fair to say this performance wasn’t exactly the ideal way for most of our players to head off to the airport.

 

‘Anything to declare, sir?’

 

‘Yes. Absolutely no idea what we were doing for the last 90 minutes.’

 

Still, the season is young, so there’s no point panicking. Not yet, anyway. Give it time. By the time we play Bournemouth, everything might be wonderful. We might keep a clean sheet. We might have players back from injury. We might suddenly remember how to defend set pieces. We might score a hatful of goals. Our tactical Plan B might even be introduced before the 87th minute.

 

Lots of mights, maybes, possiblys and you never knows. So I’m going to spend the next couple of weeks convincing myself that everything is going to be absolutely fine. Because this is Chelsea. Absolutely anything is possible.

 

Unfortunately, after watching that, “anything” is doing a terrifying amount of heavy lifting.

 

Photos will appear here https://www.flickr.com/gp/jtba/58U51292V8

 

UTC