Great British Design Icons

Go to the site link below and vote for your favourite all time Great British Design Icon.

My vote went to Concorde. I mean how can we ever top that?

Just look at the picture (courtesy of the marvellous Google Images) of this beautiful soaring bird in full flight. Has anything so lovely ever graced the skies? Will anything ever top this or are we stuck with the generic aircraft design for passnger airliners we see today? I still think it s a complete travesty that the graceful gorgeous lines and thundering engine noise is not gracing the skies today. My brother, Skank who works for the murderers of Concorde once told me that even after 20 years of working at Heathrow, Concorde was the one aircraft that everyone still stopped and watched when it took off. I saw it once as twilight set in, and the sight of the afterburners lighting the rear as they thrust this marvel of modern flight into the darkening clear sunset skies was something that will stay with me forever. Couldn't BA have let Virgin run the things for a few years. Couldn't they have kept one or two flying for Air Shows and charter tourist flights? No, only in crap old GBUK PLC would we let something as brilliant as this slip from our grasp, without any replacement.

Still lets do what we always do and sit back and let the US and Japan plagiarise the ideas and principles behind this to produce a new Supersonic machine to rule the globe. Perhaps we could get the contract to design the toilets. We seem to be good at designing toilets, or things that end up going down them (proverbially of course)

A great Concorde site can be found here for any other saddos, or nostalgia freaks who want to wallow in what was probably the last Great British Design Icon and technological marvel.

Vote here for your Great British Desgn Icon, because frankly I can't see where any future ones are coming from.

Later, GrocerJack

PC Bollocks reporting for Duty

Yep, as the news weeks get slower and slower it’s time for a Jack tirade against the utter farce of PC Bollocks rearing its ugly head again in GBUK PLC. Before I go any further let’s get this straight. Fundamentally I’m still a socialist, albeit a “champagne” one because I work in a decent (albeit deadly dull) job which pays substantially more than the average wage. But in true Champagne Socialist style I got it through hard work and a degree of luck. However, my fears continue to grow around the slide of GBUK PLC into the morass of inertia created by the tub-thumpers of the PC, holier than thou, our shit doesn’t stink, pious, goody two shoe wankers that a Labour government seems to encourage. It’s almost as if the Labour Party, in its eagerness to try and please everyone, will listen to and spend good public money on research and initiatives no matter how sad or minority affecting the issue is, from just about any sad gang of whacko's who approach them.

Hence today we see our old friend PC Bollocks turning up and producing a set of guidelines on what children can and can’t do within the realms of the school play. According to this new set of guidelines children could be prevented from acting out love scenes in school plays or drama classes. Hence, the kiss scene from Romeo and Juliet could be banned as “inappropriate” behaviour for children. Hmmm…so children of 13 plus aren’t already snogging yet? In my eyes this age group sees the transformation from grubby schoolkid covered in mud into grubby teenage hormone filled wanking machine for whom the delights of a snog are either unfulfilled fantasy or an addictive drug that leads to …………well I think you know. And thats just the girls! I mean lets get some perspective here. Kids in school plays are supervised by teachers who have kids of their own and therefore are happy to explain the context of the kiss, the embrace or the occasional “adult” word used in some of the more adult oriented plays. After all old Billy Shakespeare wasn’t in the habit of writing for Cbeebies was he? Part of their education should be about learning, through the medium of drama and books etc, exactly the evolving nature of the transition from childhood to adulthood. If we mollycoddle them by preventing them from acting out or debating this stuff, or preventing them from confronting thorny issues of love, hate, fear, jealousy, fidelity etc then surely we are abrogating our duty of being parents and teachers - because in the end as adults we all are teachers even if not Professional salaried ones? I mean its not like they’re being asked to act out the scenes from Debbie Does Dallas is it?

I will now move onto another issue whereby PC Bollocks has been present in his patrol around UK life.

Smoking. It’s shit isn’t it?

It’s smelly, offensive, anti-social and above all it’s bad for you.

I used to smoke until about 4 years ago. I smoked from the aged of 14 until I was 40. 26 years of veering between periods of occasional smoker to chain smoker, from Marlboro to Silk Cut to roll ups, with a cigar flirtation in the middle somewhere and the occasional ....ahem....joint. When I gave up I vowed not to become an evangelical non-smoker. I vowed not to bitch at those who smoked. I said I would not go on and on about how horrible it was, and how much better food tasted (my post-quitting waistline already implies that), and how nice my clothes smelt etc etc.

But things change. I hate people smoking near me. It triggers my asthma which has virtually disappeared since quitting. It triggers Teenagers asthma when people smoke near her. I don’t want smoking IN my house but GMD is the first to break that rule when she has a drink and decides to smoke (she is only at best a social smoker, but just like I used to be an "occasional" smoker the smoking rate increases when she’s having a drink). So in essence the ban is a good thing in my view. My pub will become a cleaner nicer place to go for a drink with or without the family. Just like I despise smokers lighting up near me when eating, i despise the atmosphere of a smoke filled pub. In the future i will be able to stand in my local and breathe freely knowing my lungs aren’t being infested with 3500 carcinogenic chemicals, and that my clothes will still smell Lenor fresh when I get in. The Governor has even planned a gazebo area in the garden for the committed smokers, and like any other reasonable Governor he is planning a patio heater in order to make it a tad more comfortable in winter.

However, for the PC Bollocks brigade this isn’t good enough. No, they not only want the ban but are rumbling away about banning patio heaters on the grounds that they ruin the environment! Well, in this case I stand by the smokers. If we, the anti-smoking brigade, are to have our way then surely a compromise is required. Yes, let them smoke outside or in a separate room. Let them choke themselves to death if they want, but for fucks sake at least try and let them do it comfortably. You’ve won on one hand and now you want to further stigmatize them by telling them to freeze whilst chugging on their lung torpedos? Well my PC environmentally friendly hair shirt and sandal wearing twats, I hope you lose this one. I hope more people buy more patio heaters. I hope they put some alongside the runways at Heathrow for the plane spotters to watch more and more kerosene fuelled jet engines fly people around the world for the price of a packet of Nobby’s Nuts. I hope pubs across the country are festooned with the bloody things. Hell, I might just spark mine up tonight whilst I’m out so that I’m heating the air for no good purpose. Unless you plug the world’s volcanoes and natural emissions then all of this is a drop in the proverbial ocean.

I have a message for PC Bollocks and gang - Stop looking for good causes with which to batter ordinary people struggling to get by with. Live your life how you want and fucking leave the rest to live theirs. Stop funding research into utterly crap issues and stop dictating to us on the how we should live, die, bring our children up, what we should watch on TV, what we should read, how we should travel, what we should wear in the sun, what we should eat, how we should eat it, where we should buy it from, what we should buy etc etc when in actual fact, although our world is not perfect, we’ve done pretty fucking OK so far.

Later, GrocerJack.

Mind Games

Remember a few months ago when I was being plagued by “the song in my head”? Well, it’s still going on. It’s still a daily occurrence. To recap for those who don’t remember or who have not long been reading this drivel the essence of the situation was that every morning I wake up to the dulcet tones of Radio 5 Live, a speech based rolling News and Sport station. It doesn’t play music which is why I choose to wake up to it. I have reached an age where I wish to be talked to in the mornings, not sung at, or have someone else’s idea of what constitutes appropriate music to start the day thrown at me. I’ve also reached or gone past the age where I want to be amused as I prise open my eyelids and drag this increasingly worn out body from the uterine warmth and comfort of my lovely king size bed. I certainly don’t want the inane and moronic mantra of the early morning DJ’s of the “local radio” music stations pushing their extremely safe bland housewife humour or the extreme moronic “zoo” radio bollocks so heavily relied on by “nationals” such as Virgin, XFM, or the totally shambolic shite from Radio 1 with FatBoy Cretin and his gang. This is doubly so during the dark, depressing winter months where the days consist of waking up in the dark, which has to be truly unnatural for humans, and then travelling to and from work in the dark having sat in an office lit mainly by unnatural lighting all day. I have a feeling Koala bears are slow moving sluggish creatures for good reasons if my winter days energy levels are anything to go by. Anyway having avoided all music for the first hour of the day I still don’t understand how these songs invade my head every day. Yet somehow every morning a tune will invade the neural pathways of my brain, jumping from neuron to neuron like some hideous organic computer virus, ensuring that for the rest of the day I will be tortured by some cretinous rubbish song from my past. Never does the “song in my head” ever seem to be a tune I really like, with only very rare exceptions. And no matter how I try I can’t understand the source of this chronic brain infection. I don’t listen to music in the mornings, and if I do, for example when driving in alone, then I only listen to CD’s containing stuff I REALLY like! Just what are the triggers for this? Should I see a shrink?

Despite listening to a extraordinarily loud ear drum damaging mixture of Green Day, Coldplay and Franz Ferdinand on my drive in this morning today’s tune, unbelievably, is………

Jeans On by David Dundas, a “hit” from the 70’s triggered by if memory serves me correctly by one of the first Levi ads to associate the marketing power of catchy tunes to increased sales. Just look at the recent list of the “songs in my head” and tell me that I’m not being punished in some way by a higher authority…….

Build me up Buttercup (can’t remember who sings this)

Mississippi (I think the group were The Pussycats or something similar)

Angelo (Brotherhood of Man)

Puppy Love (Donny bastard Osmond)

Pump up the Volume (Marrs)

Power of Love (Huey Lewis and The News)

Copacabana (Barry Manilow)

Gaye (Clifford T Ward…I mean how do I even remember such shite?)

The War Song (Culture Club at their very worst, I mean why couldn’t it have been just “War” by Edwin Starr?)

Shite aren’t they? How long before James Cunt’s Blunt’s awful, bland, insipid dirge “You’re Beautiful” features…..oh shit I may have just done it myself.

And here are some notable but rare exceptions where I have actually liked the song and the higher authority inflicting this plague on me has misjudged my taste completely.

Hey Girl, Don’t Bother Me (The Tams, also the first ever song I heard on the now defunct Dial-a-Disc phone service)

Papa Was A Rolling Stone (The Temptations)

Teenage Rampage (The Sweet)

This Town Ain’t Big Enough (Sparks)

Brilliant Mind (Furniture)

Later, GrocerJack.

Stop the World – Chelsea lose to Northern Bar Stewards.

Did some earth shattering apocalyptic event happen this weekend? Was the natural world order turned upside down? Am I dreaming but does the whole of the UK seem to bouncing today? Will I drive through streets of bunting, with children on half term merrily dancing round poles, watched by smiling adults to the tune of “You’re shit, and you know you are”? Will there be groups of balaclava wearing, footballing fanatical extreme militant groups waving wooden rattles and giant bananas, shrieking like banshees and burning flags with Chelsea’s crest on it? Will Al-Jazeera TV be renamed Al-Hansen TV as the country, nay the world unites to celebrate the imminent demise of the New Roman Empire?

Or did we just lose a game of football?

I’ve been barracked relentlessly at work today because my beloved Chelsea lost a game at the weekend to a bunch of Northern clog dancing whippet and pigeon breeders. In fact as I walked through the open plan office thoroughfare of sometime Newcastle, Arsenal, Southampton (no please don’t laugh….please), Liverpool, Bolton and Spurs fans I received a warm (in the same way that you might consider a face full of Hydrochloric Acid as warm) round of applause. Oh, how the egg chasers and the ice hockey fans laughed at the predicament of someone they barely know and whose team lost in a sport they know nothing about. Oh how the non believers of the religion of football were quick to flay the back of Jack with their barbed but stupidly moronic comments along the lines of “never mind it’s only a cup” and “…waste of time…22 grown men chasing an inflated bladder etc etc etc” as I trudged though the office.

Yes, they must have thought…yes..he has the Mark of Cain on him. He is shamed and surely an early death through a ritual office stoning would soon follow.

It’s true I did “trudge” into the office this morning, but not because we were beaten but because my wife actually chose to drive yesterday and let me have a drink whilst meeting some friends we met on holiday. Was this excessive amount of Guinness consumed because of a football match? No, it was because Mrs Jack never offers to drive and let me have a drink, so therefore this rare treat was too good to turn down. And also because I rather like Guinness.

But I digress….back to the office footballing luminaries…some of whom have even been to a real match once! Oh how they laughed at the fate of the once mighty Chelsea, whose season is now surely over after their second defeat of the season, a season which is over two thirds of the way to its completion. Of course my totally underwhelming “hands up, we were well beaten” reaction was the equivalent to me chucking a bucket of my excess Guinness urinary waste over their fireworks.

But inside it is still a shock. Middlesbrough, a smallish town dwarfed in footballing historical status terms by those other great North Eastern footballing giants of…er….Sunderland (stuck to the bottom of the Premiership with a hefty dollop of “No More Nails”) and Newcastle (no trophies for 50 years and being run by Glen Roeder, a man notable for….oh yeah…getting West ham relegated) and …..err….Hartlepool (whose inhabitants allegedly once hung a monkey they thought was a French spy) were presented as a David to our Goliath, and just like the apocryphal biblical tale, David got his slingshot stone through our defences three times (match report now completed!). Deservedly so as well, because in this instance Goliath had turned up for the fight suffering from 3 well known afflictions.

a.) Complacency

b.) Arrogance

c.) Laziness

I wrote here a few weeks ago about the disease of Complacency and how the Physician-in-Chief, Professor Doctor Mourinho, would prevent this from happening, or would have the cure ready should it transpire to infect the camp. And I still believe this is the case. I believe he wasn’t just dealing with this pernicious disease though. I believe he is now dealing with a hybrid disease of Complacency combined with Arrogance and Laziness. To watch the players this weekend was like watching a team that have been subjected to an Invasion of the Body Snatchers. In fact I may well write to the government to see if any strange UFO’s were reported over the Chelsea player homestead of Chobham last week, and whether any unusual pod like flora has been spotted in the area. In essence the players believed the hype in the media surrounding our alleged invincibility, a surefire way of opening the door to the aforementioned variant disease. I still believe The Special One can administer a cure and that this will be effective providing no-one re-instates the Curse of Stamford Bridge, which aligned to the above variation on the disease of Complacency has foretold the doom of many a potentially bright Chelsea dawn.

What is this Curse I hear you ask? Well this is my theory and it is this……John Terry, a marvellous captain and a truly brilliant centre-back has awoken the Curse of Stamford Bridge. This is a curse so insidious and destructive that whenever raise before it has precipitated a run of bad results that would give opposing teams the right to chant “normal service is resumed” at us. I groaned inwardly as I heard the interview on Radio 5 Live where JT publicly spoke the words that have bought the curse on use before…..

“Yes, we believe we can do the treble” (translated in Curse language to “pleaseohgodsoffootballdontletuswinanythingformanymanyyears”….one wish these vindictive sporting gods are only too willing to accommodate)

John Dempsey once said this in the papers in about 1973, just before the East Stand virtually bankrupted us and so began a decade or more of decline and mediocrity. I then heard David Speedie say it to the press once when it looked like the combination of him and Kerry Dixon might end the trophy drought, but no, we followed that up with a couple more relegations in what could best be described as a 20 year period of transition. Since Glenn Hoddle took over though, all Chelsea players have dispensed with muttering these fateful words to anyone. Clownio years excepted, look how well we’ve done since. But at least he didn’t get us relegated despite winning zilch under his tenure. I now believe that Professor Doctor Mourinho now has to administer the cure. He needs to get JT to stand before the press and say the antidotal words…….

“We’re not thinking about any trophies, we just want to win games and see what that brings us” - (which translates in Curse language to.....

“Sorrybutwewontsayanythinglikethateveragainandwillnevertrytotemptfatepretty

pleasewereveryverysorry”)

I know some people of my acquaintance think I’m an airy fairy Chelsea fan that’s just jumped on the glory hunting bandwagon that Manchester United very kindly lent us in order to help with the onrush of prawn sandwich munching “nouveaux fanatiques” that we have acquired. But the truth is that after 35 years of supporting them through thin, sometimes even thinner and at times anorexically thin to the point here Karen Carpenter would look like Fern Britton I am reaping the just reward for my faith in what seemed to be permanently dubbed the nearly team of London. And that’s why I don’t want us to return to previous days of non-achievement. As daft as my theory might seem it is indicative of the lengths I would go to in order to ensure we remain in our new found position as The Best Team in England and perhaps one day Europe as well. Put into perspective it’s now 2 defeats in 26 games this season, and 3 defeats in 2 seasons overall (64 games). If we can ensure the Curse does not linger over us then we can get back to our winning ways. Treat this defeat like the smack across the proverbial arse we needed and truthfully probably deserved. .

With our record thus far it’s hardly the “wheels having come off “ is it?

Later, ChelseaJack

Friday Facts

A lazy post that I am trialling as no bugger reads beyond Fridays. A little light fun...here are some Friday facts for you to amaze/bore your friends with.

Oh...and the "doctored" picture of Jennifer Aniston? Just the sad fantasy of a middle aged bloke who finds this brightens his day up. Definitely one for the boys.......

• A rat can last longer without water than a camel.
• Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.
• The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
• A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
• On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! (That explains a few mysteries....)
• Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.
• Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
• The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.
• There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.
• If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death. (Who was the sadist who discovered this??)
• The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."
• The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
• The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, so the called themselves Motorola.
• By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

Later, Grocerjack

Cheerio Cheerio Cheerio

Thats what we sing at Stamford bridge to any opposing player sent off during the game. We sing it with glee and joy. And thats how I feel about this poisonous prick being sent to prison. It should have been longer than 7 years, still with any luck he'll get extradited to the US on release for a bit of a stay at the no-star Guantanamo Hotel. But whilst he's away perhaps he'll learn to find his feminine side despite being as pig ugly as he is.

Not gonna be much good at hand jobs for the boys is he? Especially as his hook is unlikely to feature much in his life whilst in there. Perhaps they could replace it with a plastic spoon, or a Dalek sucker. Maybe a sponge attachment might be useful, or even one of those fluffy things on a stick you buy in the Pound Shop for dusting blinds down?

Any other ideas?

Hopefully he might be joined by some of the other idiots who are soiling our streets with their pathetic anti-cartoon protests, despite them not being published in this country. it can't be much of a religion if it feels threatened by someone taking the piss can it? And before any bleeding heart do-gooders say anyhting about me being racist or anti-islam, the previous statement counts for all those wankers in this country who protested at the so called blasphemy of The Life of Brian or Jerry Springer: The Opera.

If it insults you then don't look at it or read it or watch it. Ignore it. Use your mental "off" button. But don't dictate to the rest of us what we can or can't watch (that applies to all censorship). We do not live under Catholic Law, neither do we live under, or acknowledge Sharia law. We live under the rule of British law.

Later, GrocerJack

Magic Moments: Chelsea 2- 0 Liverpool

From now on this blog features all my inane witterings including any I have on Chelsea and golf. I tried to seperate the Chelsea stuff into another blog but I can't really commit to writing in full about them and ....well...it seems I am an established columnist at Chelseablog these days so I can write articles for them and post an edited version of them here as well. Here is an edited transcript of my recent post about Sundays footballing feast of excellence.

I needed to wait a couple of days before even thinking of putting proverbial finger to keyboard to comment on this most marvellous of games. First to calm down and allow the blood pressure and cardio-vascular system to return to its normal mode of operation, and secondly to allow the last remnants of a night on the Guinness to be finally filtered from the blood stream by the increasingly overworked liver and kidneys.

The game itself was for once everything that was expected from such a clash of two teams, one still on its giddy ascent to the very peak of footballing excellence and the other still smarting from 20 years of relative failure after a glorious purple patch through he 70’s and 80’s. To be fair to Liverpool they must still be viewed very much as a ”work in progress” team, and there is no doubt that they have a greater resilience under the increasingly barmy Prince Rafa of The Wirral, than they ever did under the headmaster-ish Mr Houllier of St. Scousers Secondary Modern. In essence they seem very similar to the early George Graham Arsenal sides, diligent, dour, defensive and hard to beat. However Graham’s sides knew how to win “ugly” and were proud of the reputation they gained in winning games 1-0. Did the Arsenal fans care? Did they hell! I’m sure that the increasingly long suffering Red scousers would gladly accept similar styles of football in exchange for collecting the trophy that says “Champions of England” . We waited 50 years for that accolade and after Sunday you can’t help but think that Liverpool may suffer a similar fate. The groans from the bar of the Matthew Harding lower when the Liverpool team was announced were visibly audible as well as the cascading wisecrack of “they’re playing “6-4-0” today. In all honesty myself and my fellow traveller to the game (Mr Chelsea) had just for once agreed at the local hostelry on Friday night that Liverpool would come and pack defence and midfield in order to preserve the points gap status quo, in order to concentrate on their real battle with Manure for second place. Mr Chelsea and me spend most of the night arguing about Chelsea and the untrained observer would be convinced we supported different teams. Whereas he watches through rose tinted blue glasses, I like to think my view is more objective and pragmatic.

And so to the game – a pulsating affair with Chelsea again doing their now customary first half cagey approach, allowing the opposition to play with the ball, to pass it amongst themselves, to familiarise themselves with the ball pending the moment we take control of the game such that the opposition see very little of the thing after that. Liverpool’s game plan was obvious from the first moment, pack the midfield, stay firm at the back and knock the ball to the unfeasibly lanky Crouch for him to head the ball down to………er……..that’ll be no-one then. Despite Morientes and Cisse being on the bench, Barmy Barking Prince Rafa of the Wirral decided that his striking needs would be best met by fielding one of the Lord of The Rings Walking Trees. It did beg the question from the Chelsea fans “Does the circus know you’re here?”. Is it any wonder Liverpool have a scoring rate comparable to that of the current base-jumping/free-falling experts of Middlesbrough? Slowly as the half went on though we started to exercise a grip on the game, frustrating Liverpool and forcing them into passing the ball to themselves on the midway line. And then from our first corner of the game via an improved Lampard, who obviously enjoys pairing with Essien, Billy Gallas, the unsung hero of the back four then popped up to slot in a lovely goal from Carvalho’s fearless downward header. I’ve never been convinced by Carvalho, he has always seemed to veer wildly between sublime and elegant defending to Sunday morning park hacker with matching temperament, however when he’s good he’s very, very good and Sunday was an example of how he can truly perform at the very top level without niggling shirt pulls, wild lunges and referee backchat. More please, every week Mr Carvalho! The crowd predictably went wilder at the goal and within minutes Joey Cole was unlucky not to make it two. Criticise him for being greedy if you like, and yes, he possibly would have been better passing to Crespo but he won the ball back and is overdue a goal and therefore in my view had every right to try and score. Had it gone in, we would have been jumping like we were standing on the Eurostar live rail wearing copper-soled boots.

And so, the first half ended and I was finally able to sit down. Yes, that’s right. For the first time I can ever remember, every person on the Matthew Harding Lower (hereinafter known as the MHL) had stood from 5 minutes before the game started until half time. It’s odd that when offered the ticket I gladly parted with £650 for a seat that unbeknownst to me my Harry Kewell like peachy arse would barely touch Not through absence, but through being in the MHL where the most common sound is the rhythmic thump of seats as they spring back to the upright position for as people stand for virtually any reason. Sunday was even more extreme, because despite the warnings from stewards and the PA, virtually everyone stood for all of the game and in the end the stewards waved the white flag of surrender knowing that this level of civil disobedience was insurmountable. The net result of this was the fact the atmosphere was of the like I’ve not experienced this season. The only real time it has been at this level was when Fulham equalised on Boxing Day. But from the very start of this game the crowd sang and chanted and shouted like 44,000 demonically possessed teenagers. It was as if the fans knew that the secondary battle was in providing an Anfield like atmosphere thus ensuring that the Liverpool fans could not be heard. Our own private Fans War went much the way of the game with us out-singing and out-chanting the Liverpool fans in comprehensive and ruthless style.

The second half started with Liverpool re-entering the pitch early and right from the start it was obvious that Chelsea were in no mood to let them back like we did Charlton two weeks previously. Robben always looked dangerous and seemed to send the Liverpool defence into tailspins of panic whenever he ran at them. Essien commanded the midfield imperiously, at times making Gerrard look like a one legged Boris Johnson after an overdose of Horlicks. Joe Cole tackled like a terrier and his body strength is more impressive with each game. Yes, he still goes down theatrically from time to time, but he stands up a lot more and holds the ball under pressure a lot better than this time last year. Still our most improved player. But as the game went on it became obvious that Crespo was relishing each passing moment. His runs are superbly stealth like, his use of space would shame Laurence Llewellyn -Bowen and his finishing is as deadly as a sexually frustrated Black Mamba whose tail has just been trodden on. His biggest nemesis at the moment is a combination of superhero goalkeepers one week, and Stevie Wonder like linesman the next. He doesn’t do as much for the team as Drogba, but surely the Crespo/Drogba front line can’t be far off, it’s a combination that would scare the living crap out of most defences, with the physical and awkward Drogba causing aggravation amongst defenders, and the Predator like stealth of Crespo scoring goals from positions that defenders can only scratch their heads at whilst releasing a Homer Simpson like “Doh” at the wonderment of how he got past them into said position. How his second goal, and our third was disallowed was beyond me and the rest of the Bridge. Surely Mourinho has to complain to the FA, or the refs association about Crespo’s treatment. It’s just too regular and surely they recognise that this intelligent footballer times his runs to a degree of perfection envied even by the Swiss train service? Mind you his first and our second was a strike of such skill that even the Liverpool fans must have been inwardly appreciative and jealous of such deadly skill. At the final whistle I‘m guessing that Liverpool and their fans were relieved whilst Chelsea and their fans didn’t want the game to finish. That’s certainly how I felt.

A top performance from a top team!

Penultimately, the sending off issue. Robben’s behaviour was shameful. It doesn’t befit a player of his skill and talent to behave like that. Leave that to mo-mark idiots like Robbie Savage, or the likes of Cheater Pires. I said the same thing after Makalele got a Monaco player sent off two years ago in the Champions league. It is cheating and serves no useful purpose other than to wind the opposition up, as we found to our cost against Monaco. The only real thing I can say in his defence is that he’s young and JM has time to knock that out of his game. He doesn’t need to do it such is his capability and potential. Reina however should also know better, and the fact is that once you raise a hand you run the risk of play acting coming into play and the ref seeing only part of what happened. Personally he should have gone for the tackle on Eidur anyway, which was reckless, unnecessary and dangerous. Can you imagine the result if Essien made such a tackle on any other player? Trial by media, instant red card, 6 season long ban, panic on the streets of London, front page headlines in The Sun with Essiens neck in a noose, the collapse of society?

Finally, to a glorious moment of tunnel shenanigans before the game. If you didn’t see it you missed a joyful moment that should be cherished. You can see the video clip here!. It must be a 3^rd Eye on Soccer AM this weekend. A 5 year old Chelsea mascot, Jake Nicholas, 3 foot high, hair dyed blue, in full Chelsea kit stood behind JT in the tunnel. As Steven Gerrard walked the Liverpool team out into the tunnel, this heir to Dennis Wise’s crown shouted “Oi Gerrard” and put his hand out to shake it. Gerrard extended his hand to reciprocate and young Jake promptly put his hand to his nose and waggled his fingers. Gerrard magnanimously smiled and tapped the cheeky little sod on the face to which he then responded with a wink back to Gerrard. Magic, sheer magic and a laugh out loud moment that showed that sometimes football is not always about bitterness and rivalry. .

KTBFFH!

Later, ChelseaJack