Chelsea vs Watford Boxing Day 2015 KO 3pm When I was initially assigned my mission to preview this game back in August I had plans to present my preview in a slightly different format to the norm. I wanted the main focus to be a selection of views from the Chelsea faithful, to get a bit of an insight into their views of their season so far, and of us and our upcoming game. Living in Cobham (home to Chelsea’s 140 acre training facility and the centrepoint of the supposed 4 mile radius that Mourinho once dictated all players must live), I assumed that if I did my research locally I’d be overloaded with Chelsea wisdom, wit and inside-knowledge. I planned my tactics carefully, deciding to focus my interviewing attention on my local barbers (just off Cobham high street) from where you’d assume you’d find a prime melting pot of full blooded Blues. I made it my mission to visit the barbers three times before the game and to use my 15 minutes in the barbers’ hot-seat to help build a dossier of valuable info. More of Project Barbershop later. In the meantime … The Basics • Founded: 1905 • Ground: Stamford Bridge, Fulham Rd, Fulham, London SW6 • Nickname: Blues • Rivals: Liverpool, Arsenal, Man Utd, Spurs • Ownership: Fordstam Ltd – controlled by Roman Abramovich • Manager: Jose Mourinho • Captain: John Terry Previously In summary: • Played 26 • Chelsea 13 • Watford 9 • Draws 4 We’ve not won in the eight times we’ve played them since last beating them 1-0 on 18th September 1999 when Allan Smart scored. Connections Headlines: Booboys: Vialli, Ray Wilkins, Brendan Rodgers Buy a beer for: Ray Lewington, Paul Furlong, Nathan Ake, Jon Harley, Nathaniel Chalobah God status reserved for: Gianfranco Zola Very attractive Chelsea architecture • Sienna Miller • Minnie Driver • Raquel Welch • Tara Reid • Nigella Lawson Dangermen • John ‘lock up your wife’ Terry • Eden Hazard • Pedro • Oscar • Starbucks Who's missing? • Too many to list individually … there are 33 of them. Predictions • Chelsea: Courtois, Zouma, Terry, Ivanovic, Azpilicueta, Ramires, Oscar, Matic, Hazard, WillIan, Starbucks. Subs: • Watford: Gomes, Nyom, Anya, Cathcart, Britos, Watson, Capoue, Jurado, Abdi, Deeney, Ighalo. Subs: Arlauskis, Gueds, Paredes, Oulare, Holebas, Diamanti, Behrami • Half Time: 0-0 • Full Time: 1-1 Project Barbershop My first visit to the barbers was in September and intended to set the scene and reveal myself as a Watford fan to the duo of Cobham barbers. One, an Indian from the Punjab, wasn’t a footy fan, but the other was like a cabby; a view on all things football but a fan of no particular team. No matter, they were happy for me to ask questions of their punters from the comfort of my seat while I waited for my turn to be clipped. The most interesting story I got was from someone who said Chelsea only entered into the sale and leaseback of Michael Hector from Reading for £4m in September so they could give Steve Clarke enough cash to pay for Vydra’s loan. It was still early in the season but by now the Eva Carneiro incident had occurred and they’d only won 1 of their 7 competitive games to date. Most thought Mourinho had ‘completely over-reacted’ and ‘was a ‘bully’ with the Eva incident and was ‘typically arrogant’ in not immediately apologising in the post-match press conference and moving on. Instead it was ‘a distraction’ and someone said ‘there’s more to it than it seems’, implying Mourinho was in some way jealous of Eva’s popularity within the squad. The next visit was in November. The heat was definitely on Mourinho. The day before Chelsea had been beaten 3-1 at home by Liverpool and we’d dominated West Ham, beating them 2-0 at the Vic. Chelsea had now lost 9 of their 17 competitive games to date. Mourinho complained about a ‘lack of respect’ given to Chelsea and had ‘nothing to say’ in his immediate press conference. The Chelsea fans were ‘not stupid’ and he was still backing his team. The views in the barber shop were pretty sympathetic to him: ‘We’d be mad to sack him, he’s the best manager we’ve ever had.’ ‘Abramovich isn’t stupid, he won’t sack Mourinho.’ ‘The Press are making this look worse than it is.’ The Watford result had, to a man, gone un-noticed. Any attempt at discussing them only resulted in how good it was that Muff were in the Prem … nice that it wasn’t us being patronised I thought. My last visit was after our Sunderland victory and the day before Chelsea’s visit to Leicester. With Newcastle’s win they had now dropped to just one place off the drop zone but sadly my visit was earlier in the day. Since my last visit their results had picked up a tad with some confidence boosting wins in Europe and the league, with the exception of Stoke who scraped a 1-0 win. Then the Chelsea nightmare revisited when everyone’s favourite under-dog Muff came to the bright city lights. Word from the barbers seat was that they took Muff for granted until the second half and that the referee was poor in not giving them a pen. On Mourinho – ‘he’s definitely safe’, ‘he’s turning it around but the players need to make a bigger effort’, ‘not sure he’ll be given any funds to spend in January – Falcao has been a disaster.’ Project Barbershop Conclusion To be honest my barber shop experiment wasn’t looking as productive as I had expected. The lack of in-depth knowledge and passion for Chelsea was surprising. I wondered if I’d made the mistake of not spreading the net widely enough and, in affluent Cobham, had instead landed a bunch of prawn sandwiches? So a week ago I decided to post a questionnaire on a popular Chelsea forum, thinking I’d get a good slug of opinion from fans far and wide and, if I was really lucky, my bit of subtle (IMO) trolling would land a couple of bloaters. However with a week gone and despite close to 150 views, no-one had bothered to bite. TBH I’m surprised … and a bit concerned that I’d be forced to start googling proper Chelsea architecture to help pad out my preview. But then it occurred to me that the dismissiveness to a Watford fan’s request was exactly the sort of patronising thing I should have expected of Chelsea fans. How could I have been so stupid to have expected them to have behaved any differently? Typical chips off the arrogant Mourinho block. Please Help So rather than spend any more time & worry on the little ****s, hoping they complete the questionnaire and help improve my preview, I'd like turn to turn the tables on them and ask you to help me do it. This is the link to my post and from there you’ll see the link to the questionnaire. Feel free to respond to the questionnaire however you wish – I think all replies are publically viewable so they’ll see them if they want to - but they won’t know they’re not from genuine Chelsea fans. So troll away! Once a few of you have done your work I’ll log back into their forum, publish the results there and sit back and wait for the reaction. I’ll update this preview as we go along. Thanks for reading fellow Orns, thanks for your help in advance :sign15:and Merry Christmas to you all! Blahblablah
The players might have to concentrate on one game at a time, but as supporters it's ok to let our thoughts jump ahead to games against the bigger clubs.
True, but we need to keep focused on the bread and butter games as well. The weekend showed that the smaller teams like Newcastle can get results against us top teams. We should be beating teams like Liverpool but we still have to be careful to avoid an upset.
The 1881 should sing "Have you heard of Colin Pates" at the Chelsea "faithful." That'd sort the men from the johnny come latelys. Google it or ask your dad if he is of an age to have seen John Barnes play in yellow with red shorts.
Knowing our luck, Mourinho will be fired right before our game and we'll lose the best chance we have to smash them in their own back yard.
I commented on Terrys bad defending for the first goal in the Relegation Watch thread. Mourinho sacked in the morning?
for the first time I actually think they could too. Damn they look poor. Hopefully the Champions League progress will save Jose's job for a while.
If they play to their potential, probably yes. But not playing like that. You can see the players have great technical ability but it's not about that. The team's all over the place. Low on confidence. Disorganized. Slow to react. I thought Willian looked decent & Remy made a difference when he came on. Other than that...
Watford are playing like a Team, just like Leicester are, Chelsea don't look like they are playing for each other. It could be very close!
Ake is head and shoulders above anything Chelsea have in that position. Or even just head and shoulders above any of Chelsea's defence.
Ake's Head and Shoulders keep his dreds in great condition I wonder what Chelski fans think about us borrowing their best defender?
Sunderland could overtake Chelsea if they win by 3 goals at Stamford Bridge this weekend. I just want Brendan's mate to last until Boxing Day though.
