The Good, the Bad and Chelsea Football Club

Bad guys rarely know that is what they are. It is only with the benefit of hindsight that the moral arbiters can assign them their status; history is written by the winners, said Churchill, and those winners are very rarely labelled ‘bad’. Good and bad are the most subjective, even nonsensical of concepts in some ways. Where one man may ardently pursue an ideology he sees as right, another may view him as morally misguided, even evil. So I write this article today with a caveat. The following conjecture is just that; the opinion and moralising of one man, who may himself inadvertently be the bad guy in the tale he is about to unfold. Yet, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be said. “All that it takes for evil to triumph is for a few good men to do nothing”, said someone, perhaps Andy Townsend. And while Chelsea are far from evil, and their fans far from bad, it is surely time to confront head on a club spiralling away from an illustrious history into a place only a few clubs can claim experience: near-universal disdain.

Manchester United vs Real Madrid Preview II: Let the Battle Commence

Over 2000 years ago, as the Romans conquered much of the globe, their entertainment came in the form of gladiatorial battles. Fights to the death as two skilled warriors battled it out in search of glory and honour in front of a crowd of thousands. Today these gladiatorial battles no longer take place within the walls of the Colosseum, but on immaculately maintained pitches in glittering stadiums scattered across Europe. On Tuesday night, Old Trafford becomes a Colosseum fit to host a battle of epic proportions, as the gladiators of Manchester take on the Titans of Madrid.

The Lone Rangers

The words 'team', 'one' and 'man' can be arranged in two ways in the popular football lexicon. The first is a form of praise; there is no higher title of admiration than to be labelled a 'one team man', a player who has stayed at one, and only one, club throughout his career. He is supposedly a worthy throwback to a bygone era of men who put the club above themselves, loyalty above glory, and fans above finances. Jamie Carragher, Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs are much discussed as bastions of fidelity, although the latter admittedly only when on the pitch. The second arrangement is the 'one man team', and here we hit upon far darker connotations. It is thrown as a dirty smear from the terraces and twitter; the notion that without that one star the team would be abject, that he alone holds the others on his shoulders, catipulting them to whatever glorious victory they have achieved this week. Bale, van Persie, Suarez are supposedly the only thing that stands between their clubs and oblivion. Even Barcelona suffer mutterings about the overhwleming value of Leo Messi, the greatest player in the greatest team that has ever played the game (which despite losing to the most expensively XI on the planet they remain). Whatever happened to players being great in and of themselves, as opposed to the only worthy thing in successful sides? The truth is they, of course, still are: the notion of 'the one man team' is as redundant and vacuous as the 'one team man' is exceptional and praiseworthy.