Patchy curtain raiser an expensive outing

SO THAT’S the season curtain-raiser out of the way — and what did we learn? A number of things, I think. Firstly that our “global brand” jaunt to the United States wasted precious training time, which has left us at least a week, if not two weeks, behind teams like Liverpool in terms of fitness. And boy did it show!

It also taught us the prices at Chelsea are such that many supporters have been forced to pick and choose anything above and beyond home league games. Charging £40 for a pre-season friendly also ensured that many supporters could afford only one or the other. Someone should tell the Chelsea board that it should have established its new fan base before pricing out the old one.

For those of us that did make the effort and did raid our bank accounts again (which have only just recovered from last season), the team didn’t really look like they wanted the win as much as Liverpool. Our football was disjointed and patchy with only Essien, Geremi and Shevchenko showing any real consistency in play.