Acceptance can wait, I’m still sad and angry

ACCORDING to famous psychiatrist Dr Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, there are five sequential stages of grieving; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

When a friend from the BBC rang me with the news at 11pm on THAT night, the denial only lasted minutes, followed by meltdown on every news and sports channel.

I didn’t think I would ever get over the ‘anger’ stage, but it was over very quickly and I have accelerated past ‘bargaining’ and straight into ‘depression’ and have remained there since.

It’s not often I feel sorry for Peter Kenyon, but the sight of him squirming at last week’s farcical, shambolic press conference when Avram Grant was introduced as our new manager was toe-curlingly embarrassing.

There he was trying to justify a complete U-turn in the club’s aims while trying to ‘big up’ a man who makes Christian Gross look over-qualified.

One could possibly feel sorry for Avram Grant too — until you consider that he was complicit in the plot. As he is obviously happy to be a patsy, there will be no sympathy when he is eventually disposed of. The dressing room, too, is in mutiny; you can tell by the number of stories being leaked to the press despite the fact that the team has obviously been gagged.

The most worrying account is of Shevchenko being used by Abramovich as a translator while the Russian delivered a 20-minute lecture to Essien on how to play football. No wonder Essien has looked a shadow of the player he is.

I am certain that Abramovich will now start looking to purchase “Galacticos” — something Mourinho tried to steer clear and Ronaldinho will no doubt be a Chelsea player by the start of next season.

You would have thought that a man that has built such a business empire would have a little more intelligence than that. Perhaps he needs to re-examine the Premiership trophies and how they were won. Alex Ferguson — no interference on footballing matters from the board — has a clutch of titles; Arsene Wenger, also no interference from the board, also has done very well when the gongs were being handed out. José Mourinho — two seasons of doing things his way with players he bought — two Premiership titles; then the interference started.

Thanks to Mike Dean’s display, we were not really able to see what, if any, differences to the style of play our new manager, Roman Abramovich will bring. That was quite possibly the worst refereeing display I have seen by an official in the Premier League within the last five years. How Rooney or Joe Cole remained on the pitch was a total mystery and the other decisions were plain for all to see.

Despite the 2-0 defeat, I don’t think United played very well at all, and they are going to have to improve significantly if they are going to challenge Arsenal for the Premiership title.

I have written this season off. I can’t see us going forward with the Avram Grant /Stevie Clarke ‘Dream Team’. I also think that Marco Van Basten was a red herring and that Hiddink will have the Stamford Bridge job by the summer if not sooner. He too does not fill me with optimism.

As if this ridiculous state of affairs couldn’t get any more surreal, we read that Jamie Rednapp is possibly joining the coaching staff to ‘stabilise’ the dressing room. At this precise moment Kofi Annan himself couldn’t bring peace to SW6, never mind some over-coiffured, perma-tanned chav.

It’s just a question of time before it gets worse too; Lampard will prolong his recovery time in the style of Michael Ballack and I will be surprised if he is with us post January. Essien, Drogba and Carvalho may take a little longer to engineer their exit, but I imagine negotiations have already begun and most of Europe is on alert. Lay your money on wherever José Mourinho hangs his stylish coat.

Finally Mr ‘Lighthouse Road Gunner’ (Angry Fans yesterday) — as your Arsenal failed to beat Mourinho’s team at all in three years, and were comprehensively outplayed by 10 men at the Emirates last season, I can quite understand your pleasure at seeing the back of him. I look forward to you facing him when he returns with one of the Milans, or Juventus, or Madrid, or even United in the future. He will beat you then too.

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