Barça’s lack of respect will be our incentive

YOU would have thought that Satan, Beelzebub, Lucifer, Mephistopheles and all the gathered cohorts of evil had lined up against Barcelona last week considering the wailing that has been coming from the Catalans since. Now that that nasty Mourinho bloke has left, they obviously expected us to follow UEFA’s unwritten rules of allowing Barcelona to score at will.

Chelsea went to the Nou Camp to defend (and possibly nick one on the break) and defend they did, brilliantly, against possibly the most free-scoring top club in the world. As Barcelona became more frustrated, they were the ones that resorted to the black arts of throwing themselves to the floor every 30 seconds, waving yellow cards, surrounding the referee – all accompanied by a near hysterical screeching crowd. The finger pointing at the ref hasn’t stopped since (with no recourse obviously) and the quite pathetic foot-stamping has even managed to achieve the formally impossible . . . getting the English press to side with, and even defend, Chelsea.

Michel Platini was obviously in good spirits prior to the game in the Nou Camp, enthusiastically singing along to the Barça anthem. I’m sure he’ll be giving it his all during the traditional playing of Blue is the Colour this evening. Especially if he has managed to engage a “sympathetic” referee to ensure that a metre exclusion zone is maintained around each Barcelona player. I noticed that an error-prone Norwegian has been selected to officiate. Presumably Terje Hauge is no longer available to do the needful and Anders Frisk, as we all know, was driven out of the game by our fans. All we need now is for Graham Poll to be given special dispensation to run the line (and allow Henry to take a quick free obviously) with Puyol on the other side as he is (outrageously) unable to take part in the match.